Partial Seeding, should it be practiced or unethical?

hey guys,


In light of the semi-recent thread about whether or not partial seeding is effective, I decided to open this thread to discuss how ethical it is..

Personally imo, this practice is very a unethical habit. This is because it promotes bad seeding habits and it does go against the basic principles of files sharing. In addition to this, it also kills torrents much faster and in the process hurts trackers(not every tracker is a giant like S*T or TL)..

If peeps have trouble with seeding back what they take, then perhaps they really need to adjust there torrenting habits or stay away from trackers with tougher peer environments .. However, there are ways to help with this without the need for partial seeding, such as hitting up FL torrents, many trackers have IRC bonuses, and others yet have seed bonuses as well..

Peeps should try to understand, its not about a single individual... its about the community as a whole..

Edit:
The only exception to my statements above would be for packs.... It really doesn't make much sense to have to d/l a 12GB pack for only one item in it... but, what you take should be seeded well..

anyways... let's hear what you guys have to say about this..;)

I don't think it's unethical to do it with big packs (because you can't download everything) because you're still uploading, and someone else is still downloading from you. Can't say I've thought about it a lot though. I guess if you only ever partial seed then it would be a different matter. Do any trackers say you can't partial seed?

Its a different conversation if you are partial seeding one movie out a pack verses 2-3 50MB RARS out of one Movie

BCG

Ok we have just started to do packs, so it is allowed on those. even though we would prefer members downloading the whole lot, but sometimes its not just feasable.

But we had members partial seeding a 1 disc game, well it has 2 damaging effects on BCG.

1. potential leechers see there are lots of leechers, think cool, get a good ratio on this, jump on, complete the torrent, and they are all partial seeders. so they cant upload anything.

2: It messes the SP system up big time, we have a 20:1 seeder/leecher rule on for every torrent. well if there are 5 partial seeders and 40 proper seeders, the proper seeders can never get the SP, and they cant upload to get their ratio up. so they have to seed for months while doing nothing on the torrent.

Can see why people may down part of a pack i.e. 2 films out of a 5 film pack coz they either have the others or not want them so I think that is exceptable.
I am totally against the grab a few torrents and seed idea to build a ratio.
I have even argued with staff on what I consider to be a pay to leech site as they encourage people to do this then it means there are even more people with wait times who then pay for gigs.
They totally denied it a prentened not to see the maths when I pointed it out to them, either that or not clever enough.

So I think any site worth its salt would discourage this totally from their site :)

I think that it is acceptable if you have a low upload speed and I thinkthat it should only be done to a certain extent. It becomes a problem when everyone overdoes it.

:dabs:

I won't keep banging the same drum, but sites that go down the path of not allowing it get my vote. I've also stated publicly that seeding torrents grabbed from other sites to some sites amounts to the same thing, a big no-no.

Of course there are exceptions, there always are, packs springs to mind, but the ethos of torrenting is to grab a torrent 1:1 and seed it back 1:11 so the uploader can move onto to other uploads. Partial seeding of single items kills that stone dead.

isn`t this the same like

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-bit...-myth-303733/?

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Originally Posted by Tudor

isn`t this the same like

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-bit...-myth-303733/?

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Yes, but that was Thursday, it Sunday already!

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Originally Posted by Tudor

isn`t this the same like

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-bit...-myth-303733/?

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NO, its not actually... that thread was debating whether or not it it improves ratios.. as it says in the title.. DUH!

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Originally Posted by markupmaster

I think that it is acceptable if you have a low upload speed and I thinkthat it should only be done to a certain extent. It becomes a problem when everyone overdoes it.

:dabs:

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thats the problem... it's too wide spread imo based on some of the responses in the other thread.. peeps think its ok, and most cases they abuse.. why do peeps need buffers?? they don't! As i said previously, that crap is for boasting how big peeps THINK there penises are.. lol

packs are a different category... as i made edit in my OP for that

Partial seeding is about as ethical as using a seedbox. On a torrent with 20 seedbox users and 20 regular users, 1:1 is going to be unlikely for any of the regular users.

So are the seedbox users "stealing" upload from the regular users?

well, seedboxes are another matter.. peeps really have no need for them either unless they are uploaders or something... reg peeps really dont have a need to use'em..

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Originally Posted by jasperr

well, seedboxes are another matter.. peeps really have no need for them either unless they are uploaders or something... reg peeps really dont have a need to use'em..

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100% wrong there.

A lot of reg peeps need seedboxes, and a lot of that depends on what part of the world you come from.

100% wrong...??? damm, percentage wise i don't thing its that much... but, sgt must've number crunched.. O.O.. guess your better at math than i am... :P

I must admit I did do partial seeding in my early days of torrenting. It's so hard to seed in a tracker like scc with my 1mb up connection. Lucky me, when I joined the tracker, FREE LEECH :D I downloaded about 800mb worth of files (2episodes?) from a 45gb pack, seeded for like 1month, built up a buffer of 30gb.

Partial seeding would definitely benefits the non-seedbox/slow connection users for a short period of time. But in a long run, that would hurt the speed of that file. Imagine most seeders stopped/deleted that torrent, left with a few seeders and partial seeders. Users who wanted to download the "old" file would definitely suffer.

IRC bonus is great, for the honest users with slow connection, but some would take advantage of it. Download at full speed, seed back at 1kbps, stop once it hits 48hrs or finish downloading. No difference from hit-n-run, at the end of the day, ratio for that file is 1:1. But others wouldn't download fast without the participation from that "cheater"

So I think it's up to the tracker itself, always let the torrent die, and let users to request it again. Or uses a system like BCG, disallow partial seeding for single game and give sp points to the "last few" seeders of that file. After all, it's all about the health and speed of that file.

[All about non-pack files, other then my story :D]

Partial seeding is only a symptom of the real problem, which is the broken ratio system on many sites. Address that problem, and partial seeding will go away on its own.

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Originally Posted by jasperr

100% wrong...??? damm, percentage wise i don't thing its that much... but, sgt must've number crunched.. O.O.. guess your better at math than i am... :P

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I'm also 100% better at spelling you're than you! :P

It should not be allowed. Partial seeding falsifies the info about any .torrent.

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Originally Posted by tknaught

Partial seeding is only a symptom of the real problem, which is the broken ratio system on many sites. Address that problem, and partial seeding will go away on its own.

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well that is being discussed in the userclass thread now, but how would you fix it.

to me its like re-inventing the wheel, but making it so it still round.

1Mb up connection is a lot lol, imagine seeding with my 256Kb connection. It would have been impossible for me to keep a good ratio on ScC or ScT without a seedbox since they don't have any bonus system. Well, ScT made some funny contest to help their members with low bandwidth :)
512Kbps is the maximum upstream bandwidth you can get in my country, and there isn't any company which provides 100Mbps/100Mbps dedicated servers here. So, I have to rent a seedbox from some hosting company which are usually very expensive for me. If I hadn't a friend who rents OVH for me my account would die in some trackers.
Partial Seeding is the only way for some people who don't have enough bandwidth or storage space to keep a good ratio on their trackers, but some people abuse of partial seeding and just grab 1% or less of every torrent, I think the last is a bad example.
I think a good bonus system would decrease partial seeding in most of the cases.

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Originally Posted by walkman79

1Mb up connection is a lot lol, imagine seeding with my 256Kb connection. It would have been impossible for me to keep a good ratio on ScC or ScT without a seedbox since they don't have any bonus system. Well, ScT made some funny contest to help their members with low bandwidth :)
512Kbps is the maximum upstream bandwidth you can get in my country, and there isn't any company which provides 100Mbps/100Mbps dedicated servers here. So, I have to rent a seedbox from some hosting company which are usually very expensive for me. If I hadn't a friend who rents OVH for me my account would die in some trackers.
Partial Seeding is the only way for some people who don't have enough bandwidth or storage space to keep a good ratio on their trackers, but some people abuse of partial seeding and just grab 1% or less of every torrent, I think the last is a bad example.

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you can keep a 1:1 ratio with those speeds... but perhaps users with such low speeds shouldn't be on such trackers that are too aggressive, as i suggested previously.. there is absolutely nothing that you can't get on lesser(less popular) trackers.. why do peeps need aggressive trackers anyways???... pre-times? do peeps actually need a rip the moment it's announced? com'on guys..

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Originally Posted by jasperr

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Originally Posted by walkman79

1Mb up connection is a lot lol, imagine seeding with my 256Kb connection. It would have been impossible for me to keep a good ratio on ScC or ScT without a seedbox since they don't have any bonus system. Well, ScT made some funny contest to help their members with low bandwidth :)
512Kbps is the maximum upstream bandwidth you can get in my country, and there isn't any company which provides 100Mbps/100Mbps dedicated servers here. So, I have to rent a seedbox from some hosting company which are usually very expensive for me. If I hadn't a friend who rents OVH for me my account would die in some trackers.
Partial Seeding is the only way for some people who don't have enough bandwidth or storage space to keep a good ratio on their trackers, but some people abuse of partial seeding and just grab 1% or less of every torrent, I think the last is a bad example.

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you can keep a 1:1 ratio with those speeds... but perhaps users with such low speeds shouldn't be on such trackers that are too aggressive, as i suggested previously.. there is absolutely nothing that you can't get on lesser(less popular) trackers.. why do peeps need aggressive trackers anyways???... pre-times? do peeps actually need a rip the moment it's announced? com'on guys..

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No dude, the contents and speeds are far better. I love Demonoid but sometimes I have to wait a month or two to see the stuff I want, and when it's announced my download speed don't surpass 20KByteps but when I use those "aggressive trackers" I hit 150KByteps easily.
Besides, I love to share and seed and that's why I rent a seedbox. Bitme is also other of my favorite trackers and some of their stuff you can't find anywhere else.

Btw, my bandwidth is very asymmetric 1.5Mbps/256Kbps and I pay $40 for it :(

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Originally Posted by Nemrod

It should not be allowed. Partial seeding falsifies the info about any .torrent.

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Some trackers warn you about certain torrents being partially seeded.
It would be nice if that practice was more widely used because there are a lot of torrents out there that look healthy enough but in fact they are essentially dead.

Aren't partial seeders shown as leechers in the peer list ?

yes.

thats why it may look to someone that wants the torrent, but its a few months old, they can still get a decent ratio, they jump on it, download it all, and low and behold, they were partial seeders, so they are stuck.

Sorry to bother you stoi, but your members aren't allowed to see the peer list of the torrents?

I only do it at TL. "TL.SEED.FiLE DOWNLOADED: 48MB UPLOADED: 4.02GB RATIO: 85.916"

:)

No, only the uploader of the torrent can.

A: its a hell of a server load strain

B: Its better for security for our members.

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Originally Posted by stoi

No, only the uploader of the torrent can.

A: its a hell of a server load strain

B: Its better for security for our members.

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I usually look at the peer list and see who of the leechers are actually leeching. Some of them usually have 0.00 as their download speed.

iTS for instance allow you to see the peer list of each torrent, but all of the peers are shown as anomymous. So, all members are safe.

As I said a good bonus system would decrease partial seeding. Partial seeding is a consequence of people being afraid of a bad ratio

No offence to iTS, but they have 1000 members or so, we have 53,000 members and 6,000+ torrents.

So all of those checking the peers list all the time, hurts the tracker big time.

We also do not get that many partial seeders either, so its not such a big problem to allow that and put more strain on the server.

The other thing is with partail seeding.

It can look like your a cheat, especially if you do it enough.

We have an option on the tracker, where it lists members that have not completed torrents and how many theu have got, so either partial seeders, or cheats. But we do ban partial seeders as well.

We banned a member from here for it, even though i did reinstate him once i told him he cant do that, i created him the account as well.

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Originally Posted by stoi

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Originally Posted by tknaught

Partial seeding is only a symptom of the real problem, which is the broken ratio system on many sites. Address that problem, and partial seeding will go away on its own.

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well that is being discussed in the userclass thread now, but how would you fix it.

to me its like re-inventing the wheel, but making it so it still round.

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In my opinion, BCG does not have a ratio problem or a partial seeding problem - at least I have never experienced one. Ratio is a problem at other sites, as users have to resort to tricks like partial seeding just to keep a good ratio. There are plenty of methods of fixing this: bonus systems that reward seeding files for a long time, things like BCG seedpoints, free leech on packs, etc. One of the main problems though is that some sites want all users to be > 1.0 ratio (and sometimes > 3.0 for higher classes) and that obviously doesn't work unless you have some sort of free leech mechanism or you have tons of people using pay2leech. There is no single solution to this problem, since there are clearly different goals for different sites (0day sites usually want highest possible speeds while dedicated archival sites want torrents to live a long time).

To be honest, I don't see partial seeding as a big problem anywhere, and I think this thread is over-exaggerating the problem. In fact, I don't think the OP did anything to back up his arguments that partial seeding is actually damaging trackers right now.

The only area where I think partial seeding is currently doing any harm is in tricking new users into jumping into huge pack torrents that look like they have a lot of leechers, however many sites warn new users against doing this, so it's really just weeding out people who don't read the FAQ when signing up.

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Originally Posted by stoi

well that is being discussed in the userclass thread now, but how would you fix it.

to me its like re-inventing the wheel, but making it so it still round.

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....I'm not quite sure how literally you were using that metaphor, but to me it sounds like you consider the system almost impossible to change without retaining the functionality of it.

Really the system can't be compared with the wheel because there are so many aspects to it, and I'm sure there are a lot of ways to improve it. Give me a list of factors and I'd venture to say that I could come up with something :)

Well you get rid of ratio for promotion.

you will find that torrents that may last months, because members are seeding it for their e-penis, or just to keep the 2 ratio for a higher class, wont seed it after 1, maybe for a few days but not for months and months.

so older torrents will die, a rather quick death i feel, maybe im wrong and members would keep them alive just for keeping them alive, but i have a feeling that would be a minority.

A lot of trackers are trying diff things and I must admit I like stoi's way of doing things :)
I doubt we will use that idea as we know have our own established methods and established members that are happy :)
Every one has an over all ratio but we don't not use that for judging how good a member is or is not as we work on a ratio/seed time per torrent. We do run a warning script for low ratio and this after a while will disable downloads but it is more for the staff to help them to judge members. If a member is found to have a low ratio due to grabbing older torrents (especially mma) and have followed our seed rules we help them out to get rid of any actions taken by the scripts in place :)

Unethical? maybe, but over-seeding is even worst.

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Originally Posted by stoi

Well you get rid of ratio for promotion.

you will find that torrents that may last months, because members are seeding it for their e-penis, or just to keep the 2 ratio for a higher class, wont seed it after 1, maybe for a few days but not for months and months.

so older torrents will die, a rather quick death i feel, maybe im wrong and members would keep them alive just for keeping them alive, but i have a feeling that would be a minority.

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there lies the dellema with that..

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Originally Posted by TP635

Unethical? maybe, but over-seeding is even worst.

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Theres really nothing wrong with partial seeding in all honesty. Its a viable method to upload content. It allows people with slower connections to contribute what they can on private trackers. Bonus systems are nice but as long as people want the content then there isn't an issue. The same goes with "over-seeding". Its all about supply and demand for content. As long as there is someone who wants what you have and you are willing to share than so be it. Everyone does what they can, thats why its a community.