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 ?