At the current time, Gnutella servents absolutely must not allow browser downloads. We hope to change this situation (with forced sharing, when anonymity is implemented) but presently, web site operators who profit off Gnutella based search engines will kill the network.

BearShare has an "Auth" token that allows browser downloads.

This was part of a feature where you could browse a user's files using a web browser, and then download the files directly. The user had to turn the option on, though.

The idea behind this, is that in exchange for allowing a browser download, the downloader has to look at that users home page, which may include advertising, or any other message or content they want to provide.

So its not really leeching - the guy sharing the file gets something (he gets traffic to his web page) and the downloader gets a file.

We scrapped this feature, because it wasn't particularly useful.