FREE LOADERS RULE!

Things that make Gnutella rock:
1) It's free
2) EVERYONE IS TREATED EQUALLY

I have been doing this for years. At serveral points, I started with noting. Someone on the network hooked me up, and let me leech off of their server, and in return, I served back to the community.

As with anything social, there are going to be contributers, and non-contributers. I have broadband, so I'll contribute, but if I had precious little bandwith (dial up) I would not contribute... it already takes 20 min a song, and sometimes it quits in the middle of the download!

IMHO freeloaders are okay. If you don't like freeloaders, use the tools that are available to you now, but don't continue to add overhead to the network to a technology that is already top-heavy with ping data (I have ready 50% of the Gnutella overhead is in ping and pongs).

Let 'em freeload, the files you want are probably still available to you (by some courier that doesn't care if you give THEM anything), and remember... all of you started with nothing at some point. What if you were told "sorry... I won't give you any files... you download more than you upload"

Remember the thing that all the Gnutella brags about - everyone on the network is equally important... T3 - 2400 baud