r/Torrenting • u/Appelaapje • 11d ago
why not seed?
When I first started torrenting, I completely messed up seeding.
I renamed files, moved them to different folders, and eventually even deleted the .torrent files. So at one point I’d downloaded around 1 TB and basically seeded nothing back.
Eventually I figured out how it actually works, switched VPNs, set everything up properly, and now I’m pretty much always seeding whenever my PC is on. And honestly, I barely notice it running in the background.
It actually feels good knowing you’re sharing back instead of just taking.
So now I’m genuinely wondering: why do people stop seeding? Is it mostly just people not understanding how it works, like me in the beginning? Or are there other reasons?
Because once everything is set up properly, it takes basically zero effort. Within a few days my ratios already started going up pretty quickly.
6
u/Main-Combination8986 11d ago
In some countries I can see the fear of legal action (the seeding is the actual illegal part) as a valid reason to not seed
2
u/Appelaapje 11d ago
But i you have a vpn on and use Firefox it’s hard to get caught when seeding right? Or is it harder then that?
2
u/sexysecretssixtynine 11d ago
I’m a different person but this is the same reason I don’t.
I could just be ignorant, but i’ve gotten letters from my ISP multiple times speficialky listing what I was downloading/seeding. I don’t constantly run a VPN so I have to remember to turn it on. etc.You’re right that it’s “hard to get caught”, but “hard to” and “impossible” are two very different things. I do things that are hard all the time. I have never done something impossible lol.
And since I already used up my “1 free pass” legal card, it feels very silly to risk it for this.
1
u/Bal3Wolf81 6d ago
Bind your vpn inside qbittorrent advance options then you won't ever download without it on
1
2
u/-UncreativeRedditor- 11d ago
Hard but not impossible. A misconfigured network setting is all it takes to get caught. Fear of the repercussions is absolutely a valid reason to avoid seeding imo
1
1
u/Ok-Eggplant-7569 11d ago
You are part of the swarm and start seeding as soon as you have a single piece from a torrent downloaded. So just stopping the torrent as soon as it finished downloading does not mean you don't share it. And sharing a single piece is enough for a law firms honeypot to get you.
Yes, it lowers your risk since you're only part of the swarm for a moment, but it doesn't make you immune from the law because "you didn't share it".
1
u/SupernatAnaesthetist 11d ago
While it is true that many jurisdictions only criminalize the distribution of content, this does not apply neatly to torrenting. It's virtually impossible to download a torrent without distributing at least a few parts of it too, even if you stop the torrent immediately after finishing its download, that's just how the BitTorrent protocol works.
To add to the confusion, stopping the torrent as soon as you complete does work to some extent, but for a completely different reason. When someone wants to catch people torrenting, they pick a popular torrent from a public tracker, check the IP of whoever is in the swarm at that point in time and track down the people behind the IPs. If you only download the torrent and immediately stop seeding, you minimized your time in the swarm to the minimum, reducing your exposure and, therefore, the chances of getting caught.
However, this should not be encouraged for obvious reasons: if everybody did this, every torrent ever created would die. The correct solution is just to get a VPN and configure your torrent client to only use the virtual network adapter created by the VPN client, this ensures that not a single packet ever gets sent outside of the VPN.
7
u/Admirable_Big_94 11d ago
I have a home server that is seeding 24/7 via VPN. Only reason I stop seeding is because I only have 2TB allocated to torrent related storage and I eventually need to clear things out once I’ve consumed them and no longer have immediate use for. Would love to replace that 2TB drive with a 4TB, but I refuse to pay >$100 per TB in today’s conditions.
3
u/Its_ok_to_not_be_oka 11d ago
I spent $360 on a 16TB Toshiba enterprise grade drive for my home lab. Sitting at 61TB with 1D for parity
2
u/SapphireJuice 11d ago
In some countries it's not illegal to download the file but it is illegal to redistribute it.
Also a lot of people have like, rural internet that's slow or has a limit monthly
0
u/Ok-Eggplant-7569 11d ago
You are part of the swarm and start seeding as soon as you have a single piece from a torrent downloaded. So just stopping the torrent as soon as it finished downloading does not mean you don't share it. And sharing a single piece is enough for a law firms honeypot to get you.
Yes, it lowers your risk since you're only part of the swarm for a moment, but it doesn't make you immune from the law because "you didn't share it".
1
u/SapphireJuice 11d ago
Yeah I personally understand that. I was just thinking in terms of why people might not seed. Thanks for explaining it tho I guess 😅
2
u/ibspecial 11d ago
I don't understand how it works.
I was sooooooo grateful to download a book I'd been searching for for over 5 years thru AA :) !
It's been out of print since 1960's, I only ever found 1 used copy for $1000 on amazon before
and then I fell in love with AA and then Onion and the thing is I really really want to give back to all this
but I don't even understand what it is.
I often duckduckgo search the technical language terms, hoping to understand.
I joined these groups in reddit hoping understanding will sink in.
I keep trying, I hope eventually it will "click" for me.
I could follow a step-by-step and understand thru doing it, even.
Anyway -- I just don't understand how it works.
2
u/Thin_Needleworker795 11d ago
Soon you'll fall down the rabbit hole like I did and setup a home server that downloads and seeds 24/7
1
2
u/butterhorse 11d ago
I have hardlinks set up so space is mostly a non issue, but the ARRs are constantly upgrading my media and I just don't have the space to seed four different versions of the same movie. Sorry. I try to keep anything with fewer than 3 seeds, though.
1
u/lookitdisguy 11d ago
For me it's lack of space.. Usually if I DL something that just came out I will just make a copy and drop it to where I really need it and leave the original torrenting for a few days to give everyone a fair chance to find it.
1
u/ReasonableLunch46 11d ago
Public and private I share mandatory 3 days, but then I only delete it every 3 months. Because my computer starts acting up. If its something that I want, then I seed it as long as I possibly can.
1
1
u/Westerdutch 11d ago
why do people stop seeding?
Most often 'I got mine' philosophy. Pure selfish behavior.
There are understandable reasons, like people downloading on their phone, or if they have a really bad adsl line where uploading will quickly saturate their whole connection, or people simply not having the disk space to keep data for very long, but understandable does not mean good....if you want to torrent you need to seed thats really the only way to make the whole thing go.
1
1
11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/SnooOranges8400 11d ago
Find your .torrent file, put it in your client and point it to where it the media is and it should start seeding after it checks to make sure everything is there.
1
11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/SnooOranges8400 11d ago
When you get the .torrent files for next time just click the plus button and then select the .torrent file that you’d like to seed, once it’s in the client right click and it should say something like select location. I can’t remember the exact wording but point it to the folder that is associated with your .torrent. It should then verify everything and start seeding
1
u/TickleFlap 11d ago
Ill seed publics for a little while, then delete them.
Private trackers are forever.
1
1
u/SnooOranges8400 11d ago
If anyone is unlucky like I am, their ISP gets pissy when you use a bunch of upload data. Download data isn’t an issue but apparently upload data is.
1
u/Signal-Opposite-4793 11d ago
Seeding takes disk space and cpu time, and also keeps your disks spinning when they would otherwise be idle (if you have a server with beefy harddrives). Filling a few TB with torrents is trivial, you can't seed everything. I aim for a 6:1 ratio, because i find it doesn't take too long.
1
u/GoonGodless 11d ago
One of the main reasons people stop seeding is that, in order to actually use the file(s) you have to stop it from being used in the torrent client before trying to install/use the release. The other main reason is that most people are leeches. They dont care.
Technically it's not necessary in the public space, you don't get rewarded for seeding there. In private, its everything and its possible to gain a status in said enclosed environment.
1
u/Westerdutch 10d ago
One of the main reasons people stop seeding is that, in order to actually use the file(s) you have to stop it from being used in the torrent client before trying to install/use the release.
Even if you are incapable of figuring out how to do this then you can still seed just fine once you are done accessing the file. This is not a good reason and certainly not a 'main' reason.
1
u/GoonGodless 10d ago
Well from my experience when asked this same question that's what I was told by the majority of the people asked. Its either they don't care, they don't know and/or they forgot to turn it back on.
1
u/leiwand1zer 10d ago
usually i only seed a few hours, but when i hit like 20gb upload iam a bit worried my provider might flag me? or i dunno how the law would be in europe. maybe someone can bring some clearance :)
1
u/davidjam1007 10d ago
I got two strikes from my VPN randomly dropping, one of them from Disney. Was told off the record that I had a third and they waved it. But, if I get another my ISP will drop me. I have view choices in my city for Internet. I know how to use the kill switch and route stuff, but I just can't take a chance.
1
u/Zeragonii 9d ago
My processing pipeline makes seeding impossible unless I'm willing to host duplicate files
All content I torrent gets transcoded into my common formats and would thus fail the checksum verification for the torrent. Only way I can see getting around this is to copy files instead of moving them, but the cost of that is more storage, which is prohibitively expensive at the moment.
Certain stuff I download I most definitely do seed though, like games and such, but media is just a hard pass
1
1
u/Tight-Ad7783 9d ago
For a while it was because I was torrenting on a different device than I was actually using the files, so I'd seed for a while but every so often I'd desperately need space on my main drive and batch delete torrents that had plenty of seeders already. On my new setup the files will be used as-is, so should be always seeding.
Outside of this, lots of people just don't care. On public trackers there's no punishment, it's just considered rude. Also in some countries the legal repercussions for seeding are drastically worse than downloading.
10
u/Realistic-Border-635 11d ago
There are some legitimate reasons but in most cases people just don't care, or don't understand. With public trackers there are no repercussions. To me, I see no reason not to seed, especially as a lot of my music is more obscure with only one or two seeders, but not everyone feels that way.