What is the best way to organize a VPN from a legal point of view?

Question

VPN

Actually, the question lies in two planes:
- What is the best third-party VPN provider (NordVpn, ProtonVpn etc.) or your own VPS and OpenVPN on it?
- Does it make any difference where the server is located (where is the headquarters / or a specific server)?
What causes doubts / concerns:
It is not very clear to me how the Internet activity of a user for VPN is regulated. Namely: what laws apply? The country of which I am a citizen? Countries where the server is located? Countries from where I connect to it?
For example: there is a user Ivan, he is a citizen of the Russian Federation and lives in Moscow. He is concerned that his provider blocked a conditional ru-tracker, or even an absolutely legal resource in the Russian Federation, was blocked during the campaign against Telegram. Therefore, Ivan connects himself to VPN in Germany.
Ivan (or his friend/neighbour) then downloads the movie using a torrent. Does Ivan risk falling under any sanctions from Germany (maybe it will be considered an offense and banned from entering the EU) or from his provider?
In this regard, I wonder if it makes sense to rent a server in Switzerland, for example (there is an opinion that there is a very tolerant attitude towards piracy, for example)? Or perhaps there are countries that are better suited for this?
What happens in a situation where actions are legal in the country where I am located, but illegal in the country where the server is located? How rare is this? Is it worth it to worry that I will break the law, for example, in Spain, which I have never heard of or met in my homeland?
Well, if we talk about serious violations of the legislation of a particular country, what measures can be expected? Is it possible to expect that absolutely any traffic can lead to a maximum (server shutdown / account ban) or in some cases there is a risk of criminal prosecution, for example? Or maybe a warning is sent if "bad" traffic is detected?

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I'm a Proton employee.
- What is better third-party VPN provider (NordVpn, ProtonVpn etc.) or your own VPS and OpenVPN on it?
The main advantage of the provider is that it does not store logs. If you have your own VPS, then the logs can be stored by the host and disclosed at the request of the authorities to which it is subject. Minus - either a paid tariff is more expensive than VPS, or a free one with restrictions. And the main disadvantage is that you must trust the provider that it does not store logs.

Answer 2

User actions are not regulated at all. Till. That is, there will be nothing for using VPN yet . Of course, if a citizen, for example, pumped up his CPU through it, he can fly, but not for using the VPN, but for the CPU itself.
The server must comply with the laws of the country in which it is registered. If you personally raised a VPN for yourself somewhere on a hetzner - hetzner obeys the laws of Germany, the GDPR, that is, everyone else, and what will happen to you for downloading a torrent - you need to look at the local legislation. By the way, this is why many people tend to start a VPN somewhere far away from their native country and leave as little data as possible when registering it - so that the maximum they can do is to select a VPS :)
If you want to provide VPN services, then the fun begins :) In the Russian Federation, you are required to follow the instructions of the RKN, that is, register where they say and not let them in where they say. In Europe - yes, almost the same. There is also its own RKN and its own law on PDN :) And the fines are such that my mother is dear.
Bottom line: You can rent a VPS outside the Russian Federation for yourself - this is of course a bypass of blocking, but this has simply not been reached yet. But I wouldn’t give a friend / neighbor a way out there - we all remember what happened with Dmitry Bogatov :) Of course, it hasn’t been closed yet, but Moscow has already fallen out of love notably and this process has not yet been completed :) By the
way, this is the answer to the question on about criminal prosecution.