The torrent era is far from over. Although suprnova.org and a few other larger trackers have been taken down, there are still many others out there, and some, I might say, are immune to legal threats/prosecution.
link removed for example opperates within legal bounds (as noted in the sites footer).
The creators of suprnova are currently developing another bit torrent client which apparently will change alot of peoples views of bit torrent (so he says). But it is to be supported by advertisments within the client application which i dont think anyone likes atall, including me.
There are currently many clients to choose from, some update themselves (such as Azureus) and others are under regular development (such as ABC(Another BT Client), BitComet and BitTornaido etc..). I'd suggest firing up google.com and looking for the various clients. Give them a go and choose one you prefer and find easiest to use
I personally love Bit Torrent and find it the best way to destribute information that people want. I'm currently downloading Fedora 3 from a Linuxiso.org torrent and its great. I get my max bandwidth constantly. And at 2.3GB its a god send to get these files in chunks rather than FTP resumes or HTTP downloads etc.
The BT protocol is far ahead of its time and I believe will last a long time.