Its on the way out for casual use but its still the primary method for enthusiast use, Its the best and sometimes only place to get flac/bluray quality and the only reliable place for console games.

I've stopped using torrents 4 years ago maybe, because I discovered usenet will use up my entire connection for not just the new stuff, but also 10 year old movies/series. I've tested it on a server in a local datacenter to try remote plex streaming. It uses the entire gigabit connection from start to finish.

It isn't completely free like torrents though. You'll need to subscribe to a usenet provider for like $6/month and a newsgroup indexer for $10/year. The $80/year is worth it though. I've got it setup so my series automatically download (Sonarr) and whenever I want to download a movie I usually just look it up myself. I've had it automated in the past (Radarr), but it wasn't really necessary. My download client already renames movies and places them in the right directory anyway.