The US took down kickasstorrents and arrested its founder in Poland despite them following the DMCA. You have to suck up the media companies to be allowed to host a service these days.
But in the realpolitik sense, I agree. Foreign company, angry US business interests, etc. I doubt this was argued out reasonably in a court beforehand.
I've seen a lot of software legally distributed using torrents where even the software creators link to torrents that you can use.
Because we all know that website and what torrents it had. That "torrents aren't necessarily illegal" are neither here, nor there. Their torrents were illegal.
(Not that I'm against it, but well, it's not like they're fooling anyone with the "torrents aren't necessarily illegal" defense for their particular case. That wasn't some FOSS/PD software torrent site, and that wasn't why people visited it, or why it was run...).
Was that true in the countries where they had a local presence?
Illegal in the US.