The issue with bittorrent isn't so much that you are acquiring material but that...

		wongarsu 11 months ago \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Authors seek Meta's torrent client logs and seedin... The issue with bittorrent isn't so much that you are acquiring material but that you are also distributing it. There are cases where downloading copyrighted material is legal. But distributing it without consent never is, and is generally punished much worse.

You can turn off uploading in some torrent clients, such as Transmission.