> piratebay continues to be the -to my knowledge- biggest public tracker out there

It has been compromised for more than a decade. The site is impossible to navigate without an adblocker due to malicious redirect ads and most of the major torrents are being monitored by rights management companies who will notify the user’s ISP of suspected infringement.

All public torrents are monitored by the movie studios, that has nothing to do with how The Pirate Bay is run. Users can just hop jurisdictions with a VPN and use these public torrents without ever getting any complaint letters.