Downloading videos is not directly prohibited by Austrian law. The relevant parts of the copyright law state that making copies and selling/providing other people with the copies is illegal and can led to a conviction, but for private use it is legal (§42 UrhG). But the current legal opinion is not very well defined and does not reflect the changes in the past decade. E.g. it does not address the question "is streaming illegal". In general you can watch/download videos for your private use (§42 UrhG) - uploading is definitely against law, but since the data retention act became law in April 2012 I would not do it.
from a practical point of view: I know lots of people using bittorrent (with uploading) and nothing ever happened, but as fuersti said, uploading is definitely against the law. If you want to avoid the upload, hack your own bittorrent client or modify an existing one, it's fun. if you are really paranoid use ssl encrypted nntp.
[finally have internet access again...]
Thank you for your input. Kampi I never heard about that, nntp servers would be something like Usenet servers ?
As a sidenote, and considering tv series is mostly what I look for to download, it's a shame that we can't get them through legal and practical ways (like Netflix, Hulu) here in Europe (or anywhere outside North America I think), even if one wants to - not at least without some months delay (for those who have cable channels) or through some troublesome solutions like streaming, itunes, etc. [kinda reminds me of oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones]