There is no fine for downloading torrents.
Recently, they found out the 50 million of Americans download torrents daily!!! Which is a large number!
The only thing that they are going to do right now, is to tell ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to throw you out of the line, if you do anything illegal. And if they do so, then you can find another ISP to work with.
So don't worry about being unlawful or anything like that, since you can't go to jail for downloading torrents.
The only thing to worry about is this CyberPolice that is going to be there in few months with its headquarters in Malaysia.
Yes! Big music and movie corporations have decided to come up with such an idea!
This police's job is to track your IP and find your home address. As I heard, they then fine you on your taxes, according to the number of things that you have downloaded recently...
However, there are tons of folks who don't care and they just use torrents.
I suppose, it's mostly the matter of morality, you know...
Despite all this, the number of torrent downloaders around the world is increasing day by day.
I hope the information was enough and thorough, but you can read more about it on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer#US_legal_controversy