To be kind of serious: The OP's question is incorrect. I think he (she, it) should have asked "How do you protect yourself from getting punished by illegally using plugins".

1. I think the first and foremost thing is to stay absolutely safe when you download software.
Here is the greatest danger of being caught. Even if in many legislations the pure download is not punishable, one should consider that according to valid jurisdiction one nevertheless makes an illegal copy of a work on his/her/it's hard disk (CD, DVD, USB stick ...). By doing this, one has made oneself punishable according to the pure letters of the law.
There is no guarantee that authorities will continue to turn a blind eye in the future when people only download protected works.
By now, everyone should know that P2P networks are vulnerable to making it easier for rights holders and investigating authorities to prove illegal downloads. With one click hosters the danger is quite low (fast expiration of logs at OCH AND service provider etc.)

2.To prevent the OS installation from degrading, many swear by constantly working offline and authorizing all plugins offline. Anyone who does so, takes only a very small risk, because proof of illegal use of software can hardly be obtained by a rights holder or prosecutor's.

3. Those who consistently block their entire OS with a functioning firewall to the outside world run only a small risk of being caught. Because the one who penetrates into foreign protected computer systems makes himself punishable. If in this case a copyright infringement is pursued, the shot can backfire if the copyright holder has gained access to the infringer's computer system by illegal measures.

4. However, regardless of how law enforcement agencies obtain a search of an accused's home - for example, by downloading a movie from a P2P platform - law enforcement agencies can thus become aware of further legal violations by evaluating seized computers.
German authorities for instance call this "Beifang". I don't know how or if this can be translated into English (bycatch??).
In any case, it's going to get hot: Every single video or music title, every cracked software, every illegally downloaded Kontakt Library will be punished and will result in damages, as the law enforcement authorities pass on their findings to the rights holders.

Best would be: Stay offline all time and never download files directly into your computers (in your home network) but do it elsewhere and store it to a HDD to install it from there.

But who will do it that way?!
After all, life itself is one of the most dangerous things we know.


P.S.: The regulations for the protection of copyrights vary from country to country, there is probably no clear general right or wrong.

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2020

well i bought fl studio 7 and with free lifetime updates, never really used it, 4 weeks ago i clean installed win10, reinstalled all soft and plugins, forgot about fl studio mainly because i dont use it, then i dl the last version on sister site, i tried to downloaded a new reg key and my account was blocked, so i used a reg key from previous version and ran the patch and all was good, i contacted imageline asking why i cant log in to my fl account, i got redirected to there legal team and alarm bells were ringing, got a reply saying my license was revoked due to the fact that i patched the reg key and was in violation of the license aggreement, so some progs do call home and you can get caught, most of R2R software is patched to stop it, anyway fuck imageline.

 

best for me is to freak out and do the firewall thing YAAAAAAAAAAAA

Silverchair - Freak (Official Video)

 

Definitely.
A good Firewall is your friend. It should never open ports by or enable Apps to bypass Firewall default but by asking you for allowance. Even with the standard firewall you are quite sure. To ease up things just use the app "windows firewall control" and use at least "Medium Filtering" + "Enable notifications" + "Start at user login"