> my parents thought it was much more serious than it was

How'd it end up? I'm wondering why it ended up actually less serious

It basically ended up with me learning that what is mostly pursued is the sharing part of piracy, and not doing that.

I got in a bit of trouble by my parents at the time and probably just stopped pirating stuff for a bit. No more issues from the ISP as we complied with the C&D and I stopped seeding stuff or uploading to shared FTPs (I can't really recall which was the issue at the time)