[muyuu]

seeding is not the only way you actually upload

you're uploading before seeding, and i'm willing to bet Meta weren't seeding but, as they correctly stated in that regard, they're sharing even when they try their best not to because of the way the protocol works as zero-upload is typically impractical for any significant size files

some trackers will additionally penalise you for not sharing file parts, but this depends on the tracker

[gzread]

and the protocol doesn't enforce you upload anything.

The original design called for some kind of tit-for-tat algorithm, but it's long obsolete and you get whatever bandwidth the seeder has.

[muyuu]

If you try to download any significant file with zero-upload, you will run out of peers that will share with you much earlier than you will download the file. It's not practical.

Most people that speak of leeching or not seeding really are talking about not seeding at all after they've completed. In fact, most clients will let you set upload speeds to a trickle but not zero (zero means unlimited in most clients). From a legal standpoint, that already means you uploaded.

[47282847]

It’s true that most clients do not support a zero upload configuration, but it’s not inherent to the protocol, and modified clients exist.

I’m not aware of any clients that will refuse to share data with clients that are configured to not upload. I don’t even see how they could determine that, especially in situations where there are no other peers to upload to, and given that stats are entirely self-reported and clients that send bogus numbers exist.

You would need a central tracker that cares, which is what private torrent communities rely on, but not public/DHT torrents such as those discussed here.

[tyteddffc]

You’re correct about seeds, but peers who are also downloading will often stop sharing with you if you stop sharing with them. Seeds generally are configured to try to give different pieces to different peers so that they can send them to each other and reduce load on the seed; they don’t want to give you the entire file directly unless you’re the only person downloading. And peers prioritize and filter which other ones they’ll send pieces to based on reciprocity.

You will probably get the data eventually, and it really depends on the composition and configuration of the swarm, but generally, you do need to upload if you want to ensure the fastest and most reliable download.

[gzread]

Long-running torrents are mostly populated by seeders. Bit torrent was originally designed for a lot of downloaders to get a file at the same time with limited seeding bandwidth, so leechers would need to trade with each other a lot, but that's not really the situation most torrents are in today.

[tyteddffc]

It depends what you’re downloading. Peer prioritization mechanics have been relevant for a lot of my recent downloads.

[muyuu]

You can, but you will slow down your own downloads dramatically by doing so. In some cases you will fail to finish them.

The case for doing this would be just so you can have this ridiculous legal defence Meta seem to be trying to pull out. Really no other good reason. Even for the most parasitic leeches, zero upload is a bad strategy.

[gzread]

Seeders don't know how much data you shared with other leechers.

[muyuu]

Yes. So?

[gzread]

So you can download from seeders as fast as they can upload.

[cortesoft]

This is entirely dependent on the client on the other end of the connection.

[blamestross]

"tit-for-tat" trading of chunks only happens between peers that both are actively downloading. Seeding nodes just let anybody leech.

You totally CAN disable all uploads in the torrent protocol. Just set the "upload budget" to zero in most clients. Just nobody realizes they can do that.

Bittorrent is wildly successful in part because every popular client makes it nontrivial to "opt out" of it's more socialist components (chunk trading, DHT participation, seeding by default).

Making an "leech behavior only" torrent client is straightforward and viable.

[muyuu]

Tit-for-tat kicks in. It's fine for smaller files to just jump peers with zero upload, but i reckon Meta would have found it challenging to download very large files without sharing. It's certainly much faster if you don't get throttled or banned by many peers.

[bscphil]

> i reckon Meta would have found it challenging to download very large files without sharing. It's certainly much faster if you don't get throttled or banned by many peers.

You're not that likely to get throttled by seeds though, and most torrents that are downloadable at all have a few seeds. Seeds have no way of verifying whether you're contributing the network, they're just there because someone (implicitly) decided to make the file available to whomever drops by and asks for it.

[bryan_w]

Would you say that generally books would be considered a small file or a BIG file?

[muyuu]

they'd most certainly go for very large curated collections like those of Anna's Archives, we're talking about 10s or 100s of TBs per archive

going 1 by 1 would be quite the exercise in itself considering just how much variety of formats, styles, crap added in the files, random password crapware, etc etc you find for anything other than the most trendy stuff