There's a huge number of "free" streaming sites that don't involve torrents at all, for basically anything you can find a torrent on. I'm talking about all the stuff that Kodi + exodus (or other video plugin) taps into... and used within kodi, it is free, and quite convenient. I don't know what any of the providers are doing to try to knock that shit down, but it doesn't seem to be working ;)
As far as torrents go, the one time I ever got a "scary letter" it was from HBO, after I'd accidentally left something seeding for like a week. And I wasn't using a block list in transmission at the time. I've never had any trouble since, always careful to use a block list.