BitComet Banned From Private Trackers

An anonymous reader writes "Slyck news is reporting that because BitComet does not recognize the 'private flag' on torrents originating from pirate BitTorrent trackers, this client is being banned from these communities. Private trackers are finding their torrents spread via the private DHT layer, allowing leechers to bypass ratios and download content freely."

Comments

Changing BitComet's User-Agent

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to change the 'user-agent' of bitcomet to make trackers think it's another client?

Re:Changing BitComet's User-Agent

[InvalidError]

The BC people could simply generate bogus agents or no agent at all.

Trying to enforce artificial tracker-centric limits is pointless. Leeches and "freeloaders" can mod Azureus and other OSS BT clients to bypass/ignore artificial restrictions like 'private flag' and ratios. For ratios/leech-ban, anyone can mod an OSS client to make it report an arbitrary yet plausible upload count, a simple form of which could be U(n) = U(n-1) + k1 * (0.5+rnd()) * (D(n) - D(n-1) + k0). (where 0 = rnd() = 1 and k0/k1 are used to tweak the simulated traffic profile)... or even simpler than that, append an extra random digit to the upload volume and the ratio magically goes from 1:10 to 1:1.

BT is one of the dumbest KISS protocols out there, keeping things locked up is one of the many things it was not designed/intended to do. Banning BC will only cause people to mod other BT clients to achieve their desired results and send BC-ban-happy sites back to the drawing boards.

Re:Changing BitComet's User-Agent

[chowells]

How about they try to fix the bug which has caused it to be banned?

In English?

[gbulmash]

Private trackers are finding their torrents spread via the private DHT layer, allowing leechers to bypass ratios and download content freely.

And that means what in English?

Actually, it becomes a bit clearer when you read TFA. Apparently there are private torrent sharing communities that don't want to broadly distribute files, just share amongst themselves. This one BitTorrent client, BitComet, does not respect the keep-out signs, so such communities are having to be more proactive about keeping BitComet users from trespassing.

Or at least that's what I think it means.

- Greg

private/pirate

[Chmarr]

The title says "private trackers", but the text says "Pirate trackers" once... Is this a typo, or fruedian?? :)

ratio is a hare-brained idea anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

People who think they're a good idea really oughta read up on Pareto Efficiency.

Screwing with the spec hurts everybody.

[DeHackEd]

This whole DHT (trackerless) thing has broken private clients from the start.

The 'private' flag was introduced probably by Azureus when they made their own DHT. People should have banned it (it = Azureus) right then and there because adding the 'private' flag broke every torrent in existance that wanted to keep private.

Mainline/official supports their own DHT, but only uses it if a torrent is explicitly marked as trackerless. This is probably best for sites that want to stay private, but people have been bitching that "if the tracker goes down, I can't download. Therefore DHT rules."

So personally they can all go to hell for breaking our stuff. (Well, except for mainline).

Re:They don't get it, share ratio doesn't matter

[The Raven]

This could have been insightful... but, you see, I've been on those private sites, and I've been out in the public Bittorrent sites. Surprise surprise, the public sites are a lot slower.

Sure you'll be able to eventually get a torrent anywhere, as long as you keep one seed out. But who wants 'eventually'. Private torrent communities almost always have fewer broken torrents, faster downloads, and less stalls. So real world experimentation seems to prove your theory wrong. Time to make a new theory.