Q. Can I Avoid DMCA Notices with a Seedbox?

It is all like some weird quantum mechanics problem, an improbable probability curve.

All, yes, All torrent related DMCA notices come from public trackers.

If you don't download from public trackers, you will not get a notice.

But if you do download from publics, there is just an increased probability that you will get a DMCA notice, it is not a certainty, or necessary likely. Though, you use publics continuously over a long period of time, it becomes more probable.

DMCA notices come from rights holders (or their agents), not from ISPs. The target is actually the ISP. They are blind notices for a particular set of harvested IP addresses for some media they have rights to. The IPs are harvested from a swarm by some tech agency that been hired to do mostly automated monitoring. The only information they have is an IP address, a filename, and the name of the provider, i.e. Comcast, of that IP address.

DMCA is large set of laws, one small part is the safe harbor provisions. This is a liability protection shield for ISPs, if you comply with the law, you as an ISP can not be held liable for copyright infringement by your customers.

Two important points, it is a US law and offers no protection outside of the US courtroom, and only protection to US based providers. Second, it has absolutely nothing to do with revealing who a particular customer is, or even proving infringement actually occurred.

So a DMCA notice is right up there in seriousness, about the same, as a notice from the landlord that there is a report of people running in the hallways.

Of course people like MPAA and RIAA are fighting for it to be more than it is. So far they have not succeeded.

Currently you can download from publics without fear of repercussions so long as your provider is outside the states and is not tied to the states.

If you want to be more secure, use anonymous sign up, put a few countries between you and your seedbox, and ultimately if you want to be sure, don't download from publics.

TL;DR You can pee on DMCA notices from a great height