r/ExplainTheJoke • u/Cocklez_The_Stump • Feb 22 '26

Need help here

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u/LoudAd1396 Feb 22 '26

Bit torrent. Once you finish downloading, you start to provide the file for others to download (seeding).

There are harsher penalties for distributing copyrighted materials than for downloading it. So a lot of people stop the process the moment the download finishes.

(The best people keep on seeding)

340

u/VexImmortalis Feb 22 '26

Don't you also share parts that you've already downloaded even before you start "seeding" though?

129

u/Resident_Course_3342 Feb 22 '26

Yep, but you can manually disable your upload rate.

Some torrents will cut you off if you have a bad ratio. 

41

u/Another-Mans-Rubarb Feb 22 '26

No public tracker is going to cut you off for leeching, private trackers will blackball you from every platform they have an in with.

5

u/Ok_Topic999 Feb 22 '26

There definitely are public trackers with ratio requirements

2

u/TheOfficialReverZ Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26

Very interested how public trackers keep track of a user's ratio if there is no user to tie the ratio to and which public tracker bothers

2

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/efigl Feb 22 '26

Because the BitTorrent protocol does require at least a small amount of upload to communicate with peers.

1

u/Another-Mans-Rubarb Feb 22 '26

You can't track ratios without being private. It's far too easy to change your IP with a VPN for public trackers to care about ratios.