tl;dr: Can ISPs lock you out of service for watching an illegal stream for a sport or other copyrighted video? What precautions should I do other than setting up a kill switch with my browser and my VPN? Also, any VPN recs for a dummy?

So I got slapped on the wrist by my ISP under suspicion that I've downloading copyrighted files under dmca. This was the first time I've gotten this notice from my provider and I'm playing it safe b/c I've just switched to them a couple weeks back. Tried /t/orrenting, but I fucked up for choosing a vpn without a kill switch... I also watch streams of sports events on sites not named twitch or youtube, so I wonder if that also played a factor in sending the slip. I am not very aware of copyright law here in freedomland with regards to what constitutes downloading.