Sounds like fun in jurisdictions where seeding a torrent can get you a copyright lawsuit like my native Germany

This is a common misperception of IPFS. IPFS does not push any content onto your node or force you to host random content. It will only host content you have added or requested to be added to your node.

But if it's a protocol in your browser similar to HTTP, you could easily request something accidentally.

Someone just has to embed an illegal image or video in their webpage, and suddenly you're downloading and seeding it.

Why should I (or anyone else) care about IPFS? It's not like I have trouble storing and retrieving data currently. Moreover, every anecdote in this topic seems to be from people who found IPFS unusable in reality.

IPFS uses the content's hash as address.

This means, there are no needless duplicates and if an IPFS node in your local network holds the data, you don't have to go to the source.

I don't understand why that would be more useful to me than my current storage and backup system.

I already don't store needless duplicates, and when I decide to store something, I don't have to go back to the source after I have stored it. That's the whole point.

How is IPFS helpful?

Has IPFS made anything happen that couldn't have happened without it?

What are its biggest accomplishments, outside of its own spread?

I think that this means you don’t have to download a copy of the file locally?