Lurker,

Lets slow down and think about what you are saying here. You aren't getting your downloads as quickly as you would like and you have decided it's because of all the freeloaders. I'll assume You havent recieved the certified letter from your ISP outlining your "Terms of Service" and how it applies to the sharing of copyrighted files. Some users have very good reason for not sharing your quota of files. These "freeloaders" may still be benefitial to the network as a whole by serving as supernodes - nodes handling a very high bandwidth of network traffic, linking thousands of users and directly contributing to the success of your file searches.

You seem to think that you should have the ability to inspect the shared file library of every user that requests a download. Then you can put those worthless freeloaders in thier place, Right? OK, maybe you could stop a few uploads to users whose share library doesn't meet your criteria, but you may very well be the only person still sharing anything. Most of us know big brother (Metallica) is watching, and are not inclined to declare the entire contents of our shared file library with every download request. IMHO you would see more sharing if the security and anonymity of the network were improved, not relaxed. We don't need any more netcops, modified version or not.

As I am sure You are well aware, with every implementation of this sort You are faced with the prospect of people trying to beat the system. Well I could take a screenshot, encrypt it, multiple copy it,wrap it all up in a zip and rename it to something like "Metallicas_ Favorite_One.MP3". Great!, now I have a legal, self-made 5MB file that fits your criteria. After I've done this numerous times,using differend file sizes and names, I would seem to have a portfolio even the most judgemental would deem worthy. What's even worse is the fact that other users would download these bogus files and leave them in thier shared folder for no telling how long befor they are finally deleted, all the while sharing them with even more users. We don't want to give people any incentive to try something like this. Just look at what is happening now with the fact that some clients and users give preference to other users with more than a set number of shared files. We are getting reports of an enormous number of files avialable, but without the expected increase in MBs. People are putting irrelevent files in thier share folder just to pad the file count. These irrelevent files all have names and thus are prone to returning bugus finds to legit searches, needlessly driving up network bandwidth.

Just a thought, not necessarily meant as flamebait.

Anyone else have suggestions or opinions on dealing with freeloaders?

The Gnu Age Philosopher