I didn;t kow this, and it’s an excellent example of what @Dave brings up above. Allowing it for seven days kind of maximizes the activity around a file. It seems like a good model, and it is one I will have to investigate further. Appreciate the info.

@Jason
I am wil you, I like the idea of re-thinking BitTorrent because thanks to the large media interest groups it has been nothing but villified. As for the anti-leech strategies, I am facinated by the idea of the currency model at Tribler and will be watching that project closely.

@Dave
You point is a very good one, and I did kid of gloss over it here. I have to clean this up, it was really like a warehousing of all the information I collected online over the last year or so as a way to get more familiar with the issues surrounding BitTorrent. And links like the one you provided just make me that much more informed, which is definitely my goal with this post. Thank.

I guess my point here is that not all big corporations are anti peer-to-peer. Given time this technology will start to be used widely and we’re already seeing the beginnings of this.

It will be interesting to see how well these anti-leech strategies work…it’s a big difference between encouraging participation in a self-selected community and getting enough _reliable_ participation to get dependable hosting. I wonder if we’ll hear someone suggest the stick rather than the carrot: students using institutional networks are required to download sharing software that automatically connects to the university’s torrent network and hosts a certain number of files.

Beside the scare-mongering by media companies?

You never touch on the fact (or else I tl;dr’d) that, in voluntary Bit Torrent networks, the network depends on demand for a file. If I want to download a large file, but I’m only the first person to download it and no one else joins me, then there really aren’t any benefits to using BT versus downloading it straight from the uploader. That problem can really takes 3-4 high-speed nodes to overcome. If the files you want to offer on BT aren’t in reasonable demand, there’s no point. (If you have a mandatory BT, like some online games use to distribute uploads or like what I’m expecting the Harvard team is looking at for HDTV, you’ll have more reliable connections and you can force the nodes to share content well past a 1:1 ratio).

Also, within a geographically small, closed network, it still seems more practical to upgrade the network rather than spend lots of man hours. (see http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/That-Wouldve-Been-an-Option-Too.aspx )

Johan,

It is great stuff, look forward to your reports on how it’s working out.

Thanks for the feedback, I think you’re totally right on both points. I need to dream up some test cases, and the idea of popularity is key to the effective use of BitTorrent. Fact is if there is no critical mass, then all my indignation becomes kinda moot.

Also, I remember you asking around about BitTorrent last year, and I know for a fact that it would be impossible for us here at UMW. I guess I’m interested in this technology as a kinda of HDTV for campus based media, for example U Penn’s mashup contest, or some homegrown media/production studio. I guess it would make sense for a host of reasons, and sharing NMC video files is certainly one. I’ll sleep on these possibilities and more, and hopefully follow-up with some ideas like universities torrenting the Internet Archive’s entire Prelinger collection.

@Ernesto
Well thank you, it is your torrents of great reportage on all things BitTorrent that has kept me abreast of so many of this issues.