Comments on: Movie Studio Sues BitTorrent Swarm in Civil Conspiracy Suit

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 06:58:00 +0000

Ratios on private trackers are one side of it, yes. But the very design of the BT protocol ‘punishes’ peers who don’t reciprocate because it’s better (more efficient) for the swarm. This behaviour is built-in to every BT client, regardless of the tracker being used.

By: NeonGen

NeonGen — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 04:02:00 +0000

Cont: Since members of private network are monitored more specifically. Snatching users with a bad overall ratio are banned from the network, rather then getting banned from a single swarm.

By: NeonGen

NeonGen — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 03:58:00 +0000

That depends on the tracker software. Often private trackers are setup to look at a persons account ratio and administrative flags.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 19:35:00 +0000

“Snatcher” is a good term.

But I think that the lawyer’s comment can be interpreted in both contexts. The design of the BT protocol does ‘punish’ peers who aren’t also actively uploading what they’ve downloaded (regardless of %age complete). It favours those peers which reciprocate as it makes the swarm more efficient and distributes the content faster.

By: NeonGen

NeonGen — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Well peer is not to be confused with leecher. A seed is a peer as well, so is everyone else in this peer2peer system (except the tracker). But everyone that doesn’t have the entire set/file (e.g. is still downloading) is defined as leecher.

The term definition the lawyer used for leecher, describes what in many account based torrent communities is called a snatcher. One that takes and leaves. But they are not always punished, if they have an overall good reputation (and total ratio).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 21:58:00 +0000

If you cause them financial loss you are their enemy.

If you are their enemy they will find you and try to harm you.

If they can find you and harm you they will try to destroy you by any legal means possible.

If you survive you were legally innocent but still badly damaged and violated.

Welcome to my world.

By: zzzzz

zzzzz — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 02:59:00 +0000

America could make homosexuality illegal again and put this producer in jail for years.
If you use the law to attack people, don’t be surprised if it eventually gets turned against you.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:56:00 +0000

It could very well be more than 95, unless, that is, they captured every single participant of the swarm. Personally I doubt that they did capture information from/about the entire swarm but instead only recorded a sub-section of it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:49:00 +0000

She (Ophelia) kind of does have a point regarding the ‘honor among thieves’ bit describing the attitude of torrenters, regardless of the torrent protocol issue, and discounting the whole ‘thief’ bit of course.

We all hate people who hit and run on torrents (“filthy leechers!”), and there is a kind of ‘honor system’ involved in the “please seed to a 1:1 ratio” thing.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:49:00 +0000

We all hate people who hit and run on torrents (“filthy leechers!”), and there is a kind of ‘honor system’ involved in the “please seed to a 1:1 ratio” thing.