yeah could be. i remember my mom reprimanding me plenty of times in my younger days for getting compuserve shut down cuz of some downloading I did and she then had to call and tell them to put it back on.I've read that cable companies dont flag your account if you stream movies or shows illegally. They flag when you download (torrents). I used to stream movies and shows on my nvidia shield all the time. Never got a strike from the cable company.
If you decide to use a VPN check out Private Internet Acess. It's pretty cheap