I agree, p2p is based on the old cliche, "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine"

I can tell you now that I would never have discovered numerous artists that I now love had it not been for file sharing. As much as some artists like to think sharing is evil, I'm an honest consumer, I buy what I like. (better than having junk emails) File sharing is fun, but I also think that despite our arguments there will still be some who wont share which is why I don't want to concern myself with them. If there were an option that allowed me to block my files from people who don't share a single file I might select it but I also think people have their reasons. Having a free program like this one makes it free to everyone, including freeloaders for good or for bad. I certainly think its worth the sacrifice of having one or two freeloaders downloading from me and 10 honest sharers each day than having no sharing at all.

As my parents taught me, "Which is better, half a slurpee, or no slurpee at all?"

Yeah I'm sorry but I think the reason is that once they get to the top of the heap with a big collection the fileheads think they are special and now deserve some sort of preferential treatment.

And again I will point out how did they get there? Most likely leeching files just like the users they are complaining about. Everyone starts out with an empty D/L directory.

I acknowledge their wonderful collection but I reject the notion it gives them the right to begin to decide who gets access to how much. I do feel all p2p programs should allow the user to set how many connections for D/L but NOT be able to block any specific user per se.

"Who the hell has 20 gigs worth of crap"

I share 100GB, upload aprox 90GB/month

i agree with mr gone.
Then what u have is exclusive groups that only share/trade with each other. NO ONE should be able to cancel anothers d load except by logging off themselves. with blubster u can hardly get anythin cause people just cancel your download and u can cancel their's.u get 75 % of a file , then it get;s cancelled , or more often than not, as soon as it starts it gets cancelled by. it;s seems to be getting very snobby out there. let's all just share and get what we can ie audio galaxy for example was good that way. no worries bout someone excluding you or cancelling your dload.
but we all do need to SHARE for it to work a6 it's best.

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I don't know, I will simply continue to share and support the p2p community because its such a great way to share and I'm happy to see people downloading from me and hopefully appreciating whatever file they download.
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I agree with Wolf. If someone wants something I'm sharing, I'm all aglow that I have served the p2p community. 10 GB is an awful lot for a limit. My old PC (which I just got rid of last year) only had 3GB's of hd space.

I personally don't understand why people don't at least share what they've already downloaded but I expect most of it has to do with connection speeds. I think it's even worse when someone is sharing a file and they are running a 14.4 dialup (2 hours to download one mp3? What kind of shiznit is that?)

I personally share around 2GB is anyone wants to buy me a drink.
;)

Viva la revolucion!

Personally I wish my connection was a little bit faster on the upstream.. I've hit download speeds of 10mbps but my upstream has never gone above 300kbps to my knowledge..

90gb/mo is about my max upload [34kb/s ish 24/7]

I have about 400megs myself
 

So what if people don't have 1 gigs worth of files. I, including many other people, are on a tight budget and sometimes people cannot upgrade as quickly as they would like to bigger harddrives. I'm still working on the same 12 gig compaq as of three years ago. I use to have an iomega burner until it pooped out, trying to save up for another writer. So basically I wouldn't be allowed to share my files, vice versa, because I don't reach a quota?, spare me please.

I have been on many sharing programs for some years now and have kept my system opened for days, numerous accounts, when 8 people would be uploading with 14.4K modems at a transfer rate at 0.67K a sec to get the songs they needed. I myself never mooched, I always share.

CONCLUSION:
Don't judge by how many files someone has, judge by their courtesy in dedicating their time for letting you have files in the first place, not everyone is a freeloader.

RJ

Howdy, quick question on the subject of leechery.

If I download a file but it's not what I expected or I've listened to/watched it and am done with it, how long should one keep it shared before deleting to be polite and not be considered a leech ?

Obviously one needs to be sure it's there long enough for at least one other person to grab a complete copy (otherwise the availability of the file would shrink to zero over time), and ideally (in the land of infinite disk-space, that is) it would be kept shared indefinately until every gnut had a copy of everything gnutworthy.

However, human nature as it is, some people will cheat a bit on the deal. If only one in three users 'plays by the rules' it's necessary for them to keep downloads shared until at least three other users have a complete copy (one of which on average will be shared, and so the gnut-space doesn't shrink and the universe is happy).

So, to my initial question, how long should a good gnut keep a file available for upload once downloaded ?

If a file is not waht you expected, then renae it to match it's contents. That would do us all a favor. If you really do not want the file, delete it. Please do not stop sharing a file just because it has been there for a while. Downloading files, and then moving them elseware (so they are not shared) is the primary method of leeching.

Thanks for the feedback.

I quite agree one should try and not propogate badly named files and of course there's no benefit in artificially limiting what you share - the more the merrier.

My problem though is this; I've only got a limited amount of disk space and it's full. Before I can download something new I want, I need to delete something currently shared. Now, in my mind it wouldn't be fair to download as quickly as my connection allows (keeping my shared filespace full) when downloads *from* my machine are taking place at a lesser rate. To do so would be 'leeching' as I understand the term - getting more from the system that I am in turn contributing to it.

To view the question from another angle, how many bytes should a consciencious gnut budget to transmit for each one collected? If everybody acted honorably, one for one would suffice, but naturally that just ain't going to be the case. If, however we know that 50% of users (by bandwidth) are 'bit sinks' (leeching 100% of the time) a good user should budget at least 2 to 1 to keep the system stable.

It's just my own humble opinion of course, but this ratio really is the one that best defines leechery - having more disk space to share simply means you'll have folks using more of your outgoing bandwidth, allowing you in turn to use more of your incoming bandwidth in good conscience.

So, any suggestions for that magic ratio ?