It's true only if you find torrents "in the wild". You can lurk/participate in an established torrent forum which gives you user reports, discussions, seeder score and a community mindset instead of a c00l w4r3z download mindset in general. Idk of english or international ones, but only because I never looked for one. TPB and KAT are not good examples, cause these look(-ed) like boards rather than forums, although I never had any issues with using them either.

In addition to gp's point: After settling my income I began buying software (games mostly) on steam/etc to support studios I like, but it is still much easier to torrent it afterwards and to not deal with bs that stores represent. I never realized before how much hassle it is to own a legal version of everything. You pay your money and they don't even bother of your convenience or digital rights, only theirs. Recently I bought starcrart remastered (without torrenting) and that battle.net downloads over 200mb over my adsl line every flipping time I try to run it. As a result, I just watch falcon pal match reviews at youtube and never run it. Blizzard deserved that money for sure, but man isn't that stupid.