I actually live in the US. And New Zealand is not a third world country.

Great comment. Here is an excerpt from Nord VPN's TOS

8.2 You agree that you shall not yourself and/or enable others to: •use, assist, encourage, or enable others to use the Services/Websites for any unlawful, illicit, illegal, criminal, or fraudulent activities, including ... digital piracy ... which might negatively affect provision of our Services to other users;

A Snippet from Express VPN"s TOS:

In using our Services, you agree not to: ... Send, post, or transmit over the Services any content that is illegal, hateful, threatening, insulting, deceptive, or defamatory; infringes ExpressVPN or third parties’ intellectual property rights; invades privacy; or incites violence or any unlawful behavior.

But it's VPN providers who rent the servers that have downloaded the torrents. So they can basically say it's not done by us, but the users of our service, and thus they don't bear any consequences? It seems like such a good business model.

VPN providers do not bear any responsibilities for providing services for piracy.

The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copyright is the exemption from direct and indirect liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries.

So technically if VPN providers do not keep logs, you are fine. But since it's impossible to know how VPN providers servers are implemented, still there are risks.

I mostly use public trackers. Maybe it's just my ISP doesn't care.

Appeal to ignorance