Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

But I’ve also seen Switzerland recommended.

Please stop! I quite often have to change it to neighbouring countries because our servers are always slow and overloaded ...

Depends on your entry point. If youre in a country, don't use that country. I you're in EU, don't use EU.

Idk, in Hungary no-one uses a VPN, as neither studios nor institutions really care about piracy there

Partly depends on the service you're using, but short version is use the closest connection you can that isn't in the EU.

I use non EU european for preference. Albania Serbia etc.

From a performance point of view the closest location to your entry is the best. Legally speaking other comments pointed out problems to that. I would recommend you do Speedtest in any case regardless of exit point to check your VPN setup.

both download(easy just grab a current Linux ISO like actually) and UPLOAD as well by creating a public torrent that you can download with your home connection/other server/vps

Depends where your peers are. The majority of mine is in the Netherlands, so that's my go-to option.

NL was recommended to me as well as an alternative to Switzerland. They have a bit better speeds to me but otherwise I’d like to hear of any rebuttals from those with more knowledge.

I would use a performant server which is recommended in the FAQ of your VPN provider. Optionally outside of your countries jurisdiction, but not really required, if it's just copyright infringement.

Regarding copyright infringement :

Law firms specialized in mass cease and decist letter dispatching do the low effort approach. Like Waldorf and Frommer in Germany - now Frommer only. What happened to you Mr. Waldorf? Their approach is: Get an IP. Look up the user address. Send the threatening form letter. Collect the money and cease and decist declaration. Rarely they will go to court.

And I doubt they spend much effort to find out who you are if the IP/ traffic is slightly obfuscated by a VPN provider - regardless of the exit node. It doesn't hurt to use a server that is outside of your countries executive sphere of influence but I doubt it makes a difference for the above mentioned law firms.

There would be means to detect what you do with the VPN tunnel - secret services and police do that by analyzing bandwidth usage and active connections on the exit node. But those authorities don't care about copyright infringement on the most recent how I met your mother flick. It's the media companies and they don't care about justice but to deter as many people from infringement as possible with not too much cost and effort. They would like to get rid of VPN providers and they are working on it, which shows that VPNs are effective.

To be fair. My knowledge is dated and might be incorrect. AI and all...

Russia? Xd