Having never torrented before, is there an actual reason it’s bad to not seed or is it just polite. Do you need to maintain a ratio of seeders to torrentors?
The torrent tracker (the "server") doesn't actually host any files. Every time you download something over bittorrent - that's purely because someone else is seeding. If people download and do not seed (called "leeching") - the download speed will go down for everyone (as there's only so many people uploading), but, most importantly, if all seeders go offline - the torrent dies and the files can no longer be downloaded.
You can call it "polite", but it's a bit beyond that - it's pretty much a matter of the torrent functioning at all. Without people seeding after downloading - the torrent dies, the system cannot work. Because this is so important, and because so many people are assholes who do not seed, many torrenting websites tie downloaded torrent files to your account and track if you seed, banning you if you do not.
So yeah, always seed. Nobody is asking for you to run a 24/7 server, of course, but leaving it available for some time before deleting helps the files spread and prevents early death. You took, time to give back! :)
It was a culture shock for me to learn that in some countries people use VPNs because otherwise they can be tracked down and fined/have their internet access restricted for downloading files online!
In both countries I have lived in, nobody cares. Tons of TV shows and movies literally cannot be obtained legally (not supported in your region), so everyone pirates movies that they cannot buy.
they either live in a regressive western nanny state (some US states, some Canadian states, UK, Australia) or China (IE are committing a crime by connecting to the 'free' internet, could be exposed by seeding long term)
Australia truly does not give a fuck about torrenting. I don't even use a VPN across three different ISPs with no issues. The closest I saw was that TPG had blocked nyaa.si so you couldn't access it directly but had to go through one of its mirrors
It's always people from western countries who love to proclaim that they're civilized and free that are so deathly afraid of cops coming after them for the silliest things.
Download qBittorrent, go to Settings/Advanced, select your VPN under "Network Interface". Now when you turn off your VPN the program will stop the connection entirely.
From the seeder's perspective, seeding is just having the torrent app open after having finished downloading a file. When you download a torrent, you're able to download it because there are other people out there with that file who are also seeding it. The more available seeders, the easier it is for other people to download. So seeding is just passing it along to the next people that want to download it. In theory you could seed forever, and I think in practice it's considered good etiquette to at least keep seeding until your ratio hits 1.0, that is, if the torrent you downloaded was 1GB, you've seeded a total of 1GB to other users.
Or better: on qbittorrent you can bind it in the settings to the vpn. this stops any leaking, because it only can seed over the network interface of the vpn and stops when you disconnect/resumes when you reconnect.
Don't make sweeping statements like this on an intentional forum. It's outright dangerous and can have very serious consequences for people. In a lot of countries they either care a lot or have to care a lot by law. My ISP is constantly hyper vigilant about torrenting and not only will it immediately cancel my internet forever, it has to and will forward it and all evidence to the police. Torrenting carries up to 2 years in prison if you're over 15. Even if they get a fine and probation they won't ever have a security clearance job for the rest of their lives.
So before you make sweeping statements that can ruin other people's lives, consider the audience.
Unfortunately they do care these days, especially if you’re using something like the ACA to get more affordable internet. They’ll take away your ACA benefits and you’ll have to pay a fuckton. I know this because it almost happened to me before I got a VPN.
They’ve always cared about seeding. Not sure what regard juice OC has in his gas station vape, but seeding will absolutely get you fucked and kicked off of an ISP.
It will, but in my experience and research, only after the ISP has sent you a million letters warning you to not be an idiot. They dont really care, but they do have to follow the law.
The only reason you were able to torrent the thing is because someone else seeded it. Downloading and not seeding is known as "leeching" and ge really considered poor manners
Basically letting people use your internet (upload, does not affect internet speed) to download the file. Not seeding is like eating food in a shared apartment without ever helping to cook it.
Oh. I gotta figure out how to do that then, saw it occasionally every now and then on pirate sites but never actually figured out what it meant or how to do it.
In torrents, you have seeds and leeches. Leeches, well, leech. That's anyone's status when downloading a file and it's not complete yet. Most of the time you're also sharing what you've already downloaded to everyone else with that torrent, but that doesn't make you a seeder, you're still a leech.
When you're done downloading and it's complete, if you leave it running it will seed. You're a seed when you're sharing a full, complete torrent and you're not downloading it anymore. Seeds are important because they're the ones who for sure have the complete torrent, and if it's an obscure one, they're critical in keeping that torrent alive. Sometimes you get lucky and even if everyone is a leech, they might have different parts of the torrent and they can all form one complete torrent, but that's rare. Usually if there are no seeds, everyone who's a leech have the same parts of the incomplete torrent.
That's why seeds are really important for a healthy torrent ecosystem. Also why most private trackers don't like when people just leech and don't seed. If you can leave your computer on to seed (and if it's illegal in your country, you have ways to obfuscate it), you're helping the torrent community.
Most torrent clients do it automatically. They start seeding the file you just installed to others. Pretty much all you need to do is open the torrent client and you should see xour files get seeded.
My issue used to be id run out of space. So I bought 2 4tb HDDs I downloaded everything to it. They are also a lot faster than you would think. They are modern HDDs. Any game before 2015 runs fine on it
Downloading pirated shit is dependent not only on your download speed, but also the upload speed on the other side.
Pirated shit is sometimes hosted by a big, well equipped, single individual but that makes it easy to shutdown. Torrenting is where pirated shit is hosted by other users, which is basically impossible to stop because you have to go after each hoster individually and ultimately the punishment will be a slap on the wrist. However, because these are just normal dudes on normal residential internet plans, the upload speed is gonna be slow as shit unless there are a lot of users hosting that resource.
It should be noted that torrenting/seeding doesn't have to be piracy. I've sometimes seem apps where the official website offers both a direct exe download as well as an option to torrent it
Typically the org/people behind them don't want to waste bandwidth on you downloading an iso because it costs money. It also isn't reliant on a third party hosting site like google or mega which is appealing to open source enthusiasts, which linux enjoyers are more likely to be.
and better download controls like pausing, scheduling and speed. Not that you might always need it, but the built-in browser downloader doesn't usually have this.
Man I just don't wanna be thrown in Jail for downloading Shrek 2 the videogame
I know not seeding is bad, but I also know that there will be cops on my ass the second a megabyte of torrented data leaves my house
Bluds really out here thinking most of the people torrenting know how to do everything safely, and are selfless people who would risk their comforts to help others.
The goverment itself uses piracy where i live and even in schools its literally common sense to just pirate something from the internet instead of paying for it
So i will never have a problem where someone will threaten me with a finr or something for pirating. I dont even use vpn while pirating most of the time
Ok, you guys. The reason behind your issues is that you're getting your stuff from public sites. What you need is a private tracker. These are safe and actually require seeding for an amount of time/ratio.
A true internet chad would leech from a public torrent, stops seeding as soon as they get the file and delete the torrent, then create and upload a safe torrent to private trackers and seeds them for as long as possible to help pirate homies safely get the file as well
SpooderJockey@reddit
mordecai14@reddit
Rustie3000@reddit
headedbranch225@reddit
The european version of the game?
Hesj@reddit
Dqueezy@reddit
JakeVonFurth@reddit
I see tower defense, I upvote.
Lucrio87@reddit
This is Reddit, you’re allowed to use anime reaction images, but you’re not allowed to acknowledge that they’re anime.
ed_xyz@reddit
Probably because weebs are bad, mkay.
Sontarcha@reddit
Deathgripsugar@reddit
EliGon666@reddit
JoshTheTrucker@reddit
WintersbaneGDX@reddit
home_rolled@reddit
Bowman_van_Oort@reddit
Absolutemehguy@reddit
MetallGecko@reddit
bigcig@reddit
blackwhale420@reddit
Average Manitoban
Soldierhero1@reddit
TomSaylek@reddit
There's something perfect about Eddys (the fuck did you say) look
zw1ck@reddit
Mallixx@reddit
real_picklejuice@reddit
LordVaderVader@reddit
When movie finishes downloading I delete torrent immediately, can't risk police on my back any second more.
Zammtrios@reddit
True torrenting isn't strictly illegal but seeding is definitely 100% illegal
FactoryOfShit@reddit
I think you'll be pretty upset when I tell you that seeding happens DURING the download as well. You just seed the parts you have downloaded so far.
If you can download it - you can seed it.
Zammtrios@reddit
You can also turn off seeding
FactoryOfShit@reddit
Thankfully most trackers ban those who do that
TheDocSavage@reddit
Having never torrented before, is there an actual reason it’s bad to not seed or is it just polite. Do you need to maintain a ratio of seeders to torrentors?
FactoryOfShit@reddit
The torrent tracker (the "server") doesn't actually host any files. Every time you download something over bittorrent - that's purely because someone else is seeding. If people download and do not seed (called "leeching") - the download speed will go down for everyone (as there's only so many people uploading), but, most importantly, if all seeders go offline - the torrent dies and the files can no longer be downloaded.
You can call it "polite", but it's a bit beyond that - it's pretty much a matter of the torrent functioning at all. Without people seeding after downloading - the torrent dies, the system cannot work. Because this is so important, and because so many people are assholes who do not seed, many torrenting websites tie downloaded torrent files to your account and track if you seed, banning you if you do not.
So yeah, always seed. Nobody is asking for you to run a 24/7 server, of course, but leaving it available for some time before deleting helps the files spread and prevents early death. You took, time to give back! :)
TheDocSavage@reddit
Gotcha thanks for the explanation
Kerboq@reddit
You can also take it a step further and use a client that integrates with a VPN client (like via OpenVPN) so that you can seed to all eternity.
FactoryOfShit@reddit
It was a culture shock for me to learn that in some countries people use VPNs because otherwise they can be tracked down and fined/have their internet access restricted for downloading files online!
In both countries I have lived in, nobody cares. Tons of TV shows and movies literally cannot be obtained legally (not supported in your region), so everyone pirates movies that they cannot buy.
Immortal_Merlin@reddit
In what hellish lands you live?
BackseatCowwatcher@reddit
they either live in a regressive western nanny state (some US states, some Canadian states, UK, Australia) or China (IE are committing a crime by connecting to the 'free' internet, could be exposed by seeding long term)
Avorius@reddit
ISP gave up trying to deal with piracy in the UK, at most they'll block a site but that's about it
Terroractly@reddit
Australia truly does not give a fuck about torrenting. I don't even use a VPN across three different ISPs with no issues. The closest I saw was that TPG had blocked nyaa.si so you couldn't access it directly but had to go through one of its mirrors
Sec_Chief_Blanchard@reddit
when i was a kid my dad told me to say it was me torrenting if he ever got caught lol
landartheconqueror@reddit
Canadian here, I've gotten emails from "pirate hunters" before for seeding torrents of game of throne (this is before VPNs were easily accessible)
tyler111762@reddit
those are unenforceable in canada BTW.
TheSunIsOurEnemy@reddit
It's always people from western countries who love to proclaim that they're civilized and free that are so deathly afraid of cops coming after them for the silliest things.
fradddd@reddit
ya i basically have one option for internet in my home, not gonna risk losing that
6spd993@reddit
There's only hell for the likes of Anon.
WasteOfTimeAndEffort@reddit
Truly asking is not seeding a bad thing?
BBtheboy@reddit
There is no reason not to, so yes
ckpwrson@reddit
idk i’m just paranoid that if i seed my torrents and then turn off my VPN my ISP is immediately going to assfuck me to oblivion
marlonwood_de@reddit
Download qBittorrent, go to Settings/Advanced, select your VPN under "Network Interface". Now when you turn off your VPN the program will stop the connection entirely.
Nestramutat-@reddit
You can set up a killswitch so your torrent program stops if your VPN is disconnected
YWNBAW12345@reddit
ISP does not care about torrenting. They're the ones who receive the "complaint" from Le Poor Innocent Labels, and Movie/Game equivalents.
But you're fine anyway. Seed when connected to VPN. Pause seeds when disconnecting. Or split tunnel. Or just get a raspberry pi.
Male_Lead@reddit
does seeding ever stop? Or you just let it run? I dont know much about torrent
windowpuncher@reddit
Those parameters are set in your program settings.
Often times seeding is stopped after you hit an upload to download ratio of 2:1 by default.
fucccboii@reddit
you should seed the same as the torrent size
casualbrowser321@reddit
From the seeder's perspective, seeding is just having the torrent app open after having finished downloading a file. When you download a torrent, you're able to download it because there are other people out there with that file who are also seeding it. The more available seeders, the easier it is for other people to download. So seeding is just passing it along to the next people that want to download it. In theory you could seed forever, and I think in practice it's considered good etiquette to at least keep seeding until your ratio hits 1.0, that is, if the torrent you downloaded was 1GB, you've seeded a total of 1GB to other users.
_Mode7_@reddit
Or better: on qbittorrent you can bind it in the settings to the vpn. this stops any leaking, because it only can seed over the network interface of the vpn and stops when you disconnect/resumes when you reconnect.
windowpuncher@reddit
deluge my beloved
ShortTheseNuts@reddit
Don't make sweeping statements like this on an intentional forum. It's outright dangerous and can have very serious consequences for people. In a lot of countries they either care a lot or have to care a lot by law. My ISP is constantly hyper vigilant about torrenting and not only will it immediately cancel my internet forever, it has to and will forward it and all evidence to the police. Torrenting carries up to 2 years in prison if you're over 15. Even if they get a fine and probation they won't ever have a security clearance job for the rest of their lives.
So before you make sweeping statements that can ruin other people's lives, consider the audience.
HayashiAkira_ch@reddit
Unfortunately they do care these days, especially if you’re using something like the ACA to get more affordable internet. They’ll take away your ACA benefits and you’ll have to pay a fuckton. I know this because it almost happened to me before I got a VPN.
univrsll@reddit
They’ve always cared about seeding. Not sure what regard juice OC has in his gas station vape, but seeding will absolutely get you fucked and kicked off of an ISP.
etheran123@reddit
It will, but in my experience and research, only after the ISP has sent you a million letters warning you to not be an idiot. They dont really care, but they do have to follow the law.
616659@reddit
Yeah same, as much as I want to seed i can't risk myself getting caught because I don't want to stay on vpn all day long
harlok876@reddit
There is a reason. If you have VDSL connection then any bigger upload speed will destroy your internet speed.
ThPrimeSuspect@reddit
Seeding gets you in legal trouble, torrenting does not. There is 100% a reason not to
SgtKwan@reddit
I mean it does use up your upload speed which kind of matters if you have low upload speed
butteryasstreflip@reddit
data caps
RedditPersonNo1987@reddit
there is literally a reason not to
BackseatCowwatcher@reddit
depends on where you are in the world-
there are places where your ISP will unilaterally cancel your internet if you're caught
there are places where your ISP is going to tell you to knock it off or be shut off first
there's places where your ISP isn't going to give a fuck so long as you aren't downloading blatantly criminal crap (IE CP)
figure out where your ISP stands, before you consider seeding for any amount of time.
tyler111762@reddit
seed until your downloaded/uploaded ratio is positive. then by all means disconnect from the torrent.
knyexar@reddit
The only reason you were able to torrent the thing is because someone else seeded it. Downloading and not seeding is known as "leeching" and ge really considered poor manners
Tone-Serious@reddit
If there's less than a dozen seeders then I'll leave it up but no point if there's like 50 of them
bittercripple6969@reddit
Yes
Mister_Taco_Oz@reddit
What is seeding, exactly?
6spd993@reddit
Basically letting people use your internet (upload, does not affect internet speed) to download the file. Not seeding is like eating food in a shared apartment without ever helping to cook it.
Mister_Taco_Oz@reddit
Oh. I gotta figure out how to do that then, saw it occasionally every now and then on pirate sites but never actually figured out what it meant or how to do it.
flyinthesoup@reddit
In torrents, you have seeds and leeches. Leeches, well, leech. That's anyone's status when downloading a file and it's not complete yet. Most of the time you're also sharing what you've already downloaded to everyone else with that torrent, but that doesn't make you a seeder, you're still a leech.
When you're done downloading and it's complete, if you leave it running it will seed. You're a seed when you're sharing a full, complete torrent and you're not downloading it anymore. Seeds are important because they're the ones who for sure have the complete torrent, and if it's an obscure one, they're critical in keeping that torrent alive. Sometimes you get lucky and even if everyone is a leech, they might have different parts of the torrent and they can all form one complete torrent, but that's rare. Usually if there are no seeds, everyone who's a leech have the same parts of the incomplete torrent.
That's why seeds are really important for a healthy torrent ecosystem. Also why most private trackers don't like when people just leech and don't seed. If you can leave your computer on to seed (and if it's illegal in your country, you have ways to obfuscate it), you're helping the torrent community.
cookie_n_icecream@reddit
Most torrent clients do it automatically. They start seeding the file you just installed to others. Pretty much all you need to do is open the torrent client and you should see xour files get seeded.
stuyboi888@reddit
My issue used to be id run out of space. So I bought 2 4tb HDDs I downloaded everything to it. They are also a lot faster than you would think. They are modern HDDs. Any game before 2015 runs fine on it
Drummk@reddit
I might be misunderstanding but don't torrents seed as they download? I.e. if you had downloaded 50% of the game that 50% would be seeding?
DMofTheTomb@reddit
I don't get it
GoatRocketeer@reddit
Downloading pirated shit is dependent not only on your download speed, but also the upload speed on the other side.
Pirated shit is sometimes hosted by a big, well equipped, single individual but that makes it easy to shutdown. Torrenting is where pirated shit is hosted by other users, which is basically impossible to stop because you have to go after each hoster individually and ultimately the punishment will be a slap on the wrist. However, because these are just normal dudes on normal residential internet plans, the upload speed is gonna be slow as shit unless there are a lot of users hosting that resource.
Hosting pirated shit is known as seeding.
casualbrowser321@reddit
It should be noted that torrenting/seeding doesn't have to be piracy. I've sometimes seem apps where the official website offers both a direct exe download as well as an option to torrent it
Epikgamer332@reddit
I see this often with Linux distros, for whatever reason.
LennySMeme@reddit
Typically the org/people behind them don't want to waste bandwidth on you downloading an iso because it costs money. It also isn't reliant on a third party hosting site like google or mega which is appealing to open source enthusiasts, which linux enjoyers are more likely to be.
sthegreT@reddit
and better download controls like pausing, scheduling and speed. Not that you might always need it, but the built-in browser downloader doesn't usually have this.
bionic_link@reddit
So that's why I got the call once after I downloaded Kingdom Hearts, then once I deleted it never again. The more you know.
Walter_Padick@reddit
Person who pirates media does not care to share
Pintsocream@reddit
I seed for 10x as long as it takes me to download. So about a minute total.
dirschau@reddit
Anon is saving all his seed for the jar
Pecheuer@reddit
With a my little pony
TheHighLizard@reddit
throwawayforlikeaday@reddit
*OUR little pony, excuse
DarkKryo@reddit
Man I just don't wanna be thrown in Jail for downloading Shrek 2 the videogame
I know not seeding is bad, but I also know that there will be cops on my ass the second a megabyte of torrented data leaves my house
maninahat@reddit
"You should pirate things in a polite and ethical way", what is this madness?
StrengthfromDeath@reddit
Bluds really out here thinking most of the people torrenting know how to do everything safely, and are selfless people who would risk their comforts to help others.
NordicWolf7@reddit
Torrent seeders and Winrar buyers are the only people who get to go to Heaven.
rocketmonke32@reddit
ELI5 anyone..?
throwawayforlikeaday@reddit
return the digital cart you monster
Holy_Sword_of_Cum@reddit
The goverment itself uses piracy where i live and even in schools its literally common sense to just pirate something from the internet instead of paying for it
So i will never have a problem where someone will threaten me with a finr or something for pirating. I dont even use vpn while pirating most of the time
SuchTesla@reddit
Russia?
Silver-Performer818@reddit
India
Holy_Sword_of_Cum@reddit
Good guess, but its turkey. The land of döner and goverment corruption.
SuchTesla@reddit
Well at least you have döner, we just have corruption here with no döner
Scarab_Kisser@reddit
I'm gonna seed double the amount, so anon decision is irrelevant
notpornaccount_@reddit
Ok, you guys. The reason behind your issues is that you're getting your stuff from public sites. What you need is a private tracker. These are safe and actually require seeding for an amount of time/ratio.
Parsa79@reddit
A true internet chad would leech from a public torrent, stops seeding as soon as they get the file and delete the torrent, then create and upload a safe torrent to private trackers and seeds them for as long as possible to help pirate homies safely get the file as well
notpornaccount_@reddit
That is true. Quite a Chad.
ncopp@reddit
Be 16 year old me
CirrusVision20@reddit
This legit happened to me once. It scared me enough to have my delete all my torrents and I never pirated another game since (besides emulation).
shroomigator@reddit
If you have a fast wired connection you should be seeding
If you connect your laptop to the wifi in walmarts parking lot, you don't need to seed
Absolutemehguy@reddit
hallucination9000@reddit
I haven't torrented in a long time.
2ndRandom8675309@reddit
Anon not pictured because he's under the desk tonguing balls like a person who doesn't seed.
cloud12348@reddit
You at least seed the size of the download anon, many years of misfortune on your family.
ExoTheFlyingFish@reddit
I'm sure this means something.
gbuub@reddit
Seeding? Don’t mind if I do. *unzip
YF-29-Durandal@reddit
I hope Anon steps on Legos for hours on end.
TheToroRossoboi@reddit
Unlike most, i don't seed because i don't have enough storage to do so. (256GB SSD)
Deathgripsugar@reddit
There is always a need for seed!
fradddd@reddit
other people with their crazy undetectable setups, uploaders, and dummies who don’t realize what seeding is are good enough, i dont need to seed