I personally like lxc’s over vms for my home lab and i run a dedicated lxc for docker and one running a single node k8s.

So i see this alot and i understand it but at least in my country (canada) i have been torrenting for well over 15 years with out a vpn. The worst case is a 5k fine total but not before a letter from the isp forwarded to me on behalf of the copyright holder. Which i can ignore with out any issue since they have no idea who i am.

Issues will arise if you reply to them.

So is vpn required?

it depends on where you live and your confort with your risk.