You know they dump logs because like I said they employ third-party contractors to come in and perform security audits that validate their privacy policy, which if you do proper research should include dumping of logs, or only minimal data retention (like how mine only required an email address) along with dumping. So you can confirm it, I guess you can still be weary of that if you'd like but it is in their best interest to make sure you are actually safe, otherwise that is a hit on their reputation.

As for what happened after receiving a DMCA, they tell you that you have so many strikes on your account and that if you violate that a certain amount of times within a time period, then they will terminate your service. The ISP is not the person who would be pursuing you, their only liability is that you don't do illegal things on their network.

But again, all these steps beyond just a VPN are to ensure there is as little identifying information as possible so they can't track you down. Unless you are a literal Scene person who is doing the actual dumping and uploading of content, no one is out here watching you unless you leave easily identifiable information public while torrenting, at least this has been my experience after torrenting probably 100s of TBs of data both via seeding and leeching.