I know YouTube is a terrible provider of pirated content and also that it is almost impossible to pirate without a VPN, but I would like to know: if I download a movie from YouTube (directly from it, of course) without a VPN, will I receive “that type of message” from my ISP?
It’s not impossible to pirate without a VPN, just use Usenet. Until a couple months ago when I had some free time and was super super bored, I hadn’t even bothered to tell SABnzbd to use a VPN. Over two ISPs and however many hundreds of episodes and movies watched, I never got any letters. Likewise, you usually are pretty safe on private torrent trackers, because copyright trolls don’t like putting in the effort of maintaining access.