Was that the actual tracker and tracker only, or was there a web front end that hosted all the torrent files and forums and so forth? Because the latter will make you a big target.
A lot of the best torrents are now on private trackers in my experience. I'm not clear why, but observing the communities involved, members seem to take great pride in e.g. well formatted e-books, well organized audiobook files, creating different resolutions and compression rate variations of a movie or tv show, and I suppose want to keep those in the community?
A tracker is ostensibly a content-neutral middleman. Your ISP isn't illegal (and until recently was not thought to be subject to civil penalties; now there is at least one ongoing case) either.
A lot of these websites were "come here and pirate lots of shit," often had tools to make it easier to specifically search for infringing content, and would remove torrents that were not tagged correctly. In many cases some of the people running the sites were also seeding.
That makes it hard to argue "we're just passing packets"
I miss shit being worth torrenting. Maybe things have changed, maybe I grew up, but:
1. Most utility software you need is free, save for a few programs you can easily find on Russian torrents.
2. Most games and other media are slop.
Torrents didn't die because US law enforcement made them die. Torrents died because most companies realized that providing slop with ads and lootboxes for free is a much better business model than trying to get people to pay for something of quality.
Imagine trying to tell someone in year 2000 that Windows will natively display ads, EA will lose lawsuits related to FIFA being actual old-fashioned gambling, and music industry will push for AI-generated content. Yet somehow we accept this as completely normal in 2025. No wonder nobody ain't torrenting shit.
Well, I myself consider many of today's TV shows slop and not worth the need to watch them through a torrent source. Low quality content en mass for streaming services is a thing now.
But that's a personal view.
God I miss rarbg. And KAT.