Bad Link building may hurt the rankings, Link building can't be die, because network of network is internet, network is a collection of links.. so links are much more important factor of world wide web. So do quality link building and try to avoid google's penalty.
Link Building is not dead..but it is dying due to new ways like social signals which gives information about the authority or importance of a websites content or articles. I wouldn't worry much unless you are involved with link farms or linking to sites that are irrelevant to your niche.
Easy Content said it right "Low quality links building has died." That's the whole issue right now. Low-quality link building is deceased, but if we do our campaigns naturally, it helps us rather than hurts us. No badly-spun comments and copying and pasting the same content in multiple places, and just use common sense.
Private blog network link building is still very powerful. I don't see any indication that it's going anywhere either.