Private Torrent Sites Overemphasize Share Ratios

https://torrentfreak.com/private-torrent-sites-overemphasize-share-ratios-according-to-bram-cohen/

Bram Cohen, inventor of the BitTorrent protocol believes that private torrent sites should stop tracking the ratios of their users the way they do now. He argues that the sites are overemphasizing the importance of the upload / download ratio, which fosters the creation of ratio cheating software, and calls it “extremely destructive”.

Bram Cohen told Zeropaid:

   “[Leechers are] engaging in perfectly reasonable and non-destructive behavior and the site is trying to punish him for it, thus fostering the creation of clients which lie about their statistics. This is the site’s fault, and the result could do serious damage to the value of BitTorrent statistics generally. Sites which do this are being extremely destructive, and the way they grandstand about how they’re fostering sharing really ticks me off.”

bram cohen bittorrentAccording to Bram the nature of the BitTorrent protocol is built to prevent freeriding. Its Tit-for-Tat algorithm makes sure that you only upload pieces of the file to people who offer something to you. The more you upload to others, the more you receive. By overestimating the importance of the share ratio, it becomes almost impossible for some to actually reach a decent share ratio.

He continues:

   “Just a little bit of threatening to ban people can get the overall balance to be very heavily weighted on the side of uploading, making it difficult for people to accomplish a reasonable amount of upload even if they try.”

To prevent overseeded torrents from “messing up” peoples ratio Bram suggest an alternative method to calculate the share ratio:

   “When a client reports new downloads to the tracker, the tracker can multiply the amount by (number of current peers total - number of current seeds) / (number of current peers total) and add that to the ‘total downloaded’. This results in most people having a ‘ratio’ of more than 1, but that isn’t actually a problem unless you’re more interested in mathematical purity than practical behavior.”
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I think he's right...

    what do you think would happen to this site if there wasnt any regulations??    

I wouldn't want to find out...i dont think it'd be any fun anymore..competing for a hi ratio and what not.

there is alot of cheating ratio programmes wich make ppl in one day can upload a 300 gigas without downloading (ofcourse  the cheater will do it in a reasonable way) but not all sites can be cheated or these programmes work on it

seconed if ppl are free to upload or not i think most sets will be unseeded in a short time according to it's seeders

here in tribal mixes i think it's like a game or somethin i am not dealin with it as a rule am dealin with it like am helping ppl to get their needs but there is another ppls don't like helping so i am sure that by this rule they will do it even they don't like it

well, this is all really funny. 3-4 years after bram made up this bittorrent protocol and everything about it, through it out and forgot about it, now he is trying to affect the world fs community as in ratio-issues... yes, bittorrent was made without considering ratios; yes, there must be no ratios on tracker websites; yes, there are tweaked clients that can cheat tracker (most of them we can easily track); yes, it's all true; yes, tribalmixes.com is a closed community tracker that will ALWAYS have ratio and rules for seeding, otherwise MOST people will not seed, making it harder to download something.

my friends, those who have been here for long time, who remembers summer of 2005, can say, that only slash was seeding something, others didn't bother, up until spring 2006 when alot of new users joined here and speed started to grow, even this summer i was yet admiring the high-speed downloads that we were (are still) having. what can i say.. superseed2 is giving me personally about 70% of my client's downloaded data. if there was no superseed2, download speeds wouldn't raise to 500Kb/s so easily..

everyone must decide for themselves - to be a part of this mess and seed alot thus download new stuff fast, or to cheat tracker and get banned, or to download ratio free torrents, and sit with them.. all i can say here..

i consider my self as a part of this community and i am looking forward to share all this stuff in this site coz i know wat does it mean slow downloading when u r connection is high speed connection sure i ll seed with all my speed nothing gonna happen when u give ppl some of wat u have and nothing alos will happen when u give it to them with high speed ratio is the best rule to control this ppl who want only to down and then just easy delete it from their torrent clients i will standd with the ratio rule maybe i can see that there is other rules i don't like but this one i am standing with till the end          



Thanx tawakol nice thread

I wasn't saying that he's right about having no ratios..did you ppl read the whole article?

This is what I think he's right about:


Changing the way the ratio is calculated, and i am not saying this to hel me, my ratio is fine, i just think its more fair

If you've read the rules of the site you would know that uploading something to the other users is not the only way to increase your ratio.

There are few othere ways to do it like just let the torrents be seeded longer no matter if someone will dnload the m from you or be just more active in the website there is a lottery etc..

i think this site is just fine the way it is. having rules is not a bad thing, you can learn to live with them (and you should do that here). this community is very nice, slash is rigth about the download speeds: this way you can use your bandwith most of the time. of course sometimes some rules need to be changed, but i don't think this ratio thing is bad at all. regarding the ratio free torrents especially.. tribalmixes.com is the best site for music