Are torrents legal

Torrents themselves are not illegal. They are simply small files that help a BitTorrent client connect to a tracker and find peers to download files from. Nor is downloading stuff using torrents necessarily illegal. The BitTorrent protocol is a legitimate way to distribute large files without straining a server too much. It is used for legal software like Linux distros and OpenOffice, as well as some public domain music and videos.

Using torrents to download copyrighted material without permission is, of course, illegal.