How Do Seeders Profit From BitTorrent?

arcticstoat writes "As you may remember, a recent study claimed that just 100 users were responsible for downloading 75% of BitTorrent content, and were doing it for money, raising a lot of questions about the study. How do you profit from seeding, and how can the same 100 users be responsible for 75% of downloading and 66% of uploading. The details of the study are clarified in an interview with one of the key researchers, showing that the study's actual statistic is that 66% of the original seeds indexed on the Pirate Bay come from just 100 users, and these seeds then go on to account for 75% of downloads. The interview also details how it's possible for this small number of seeders to make a profit from seeding, via embedding links to their own indexing sites in the filenames and bundled TXT files, which then get money from advertising if downloaders decide to visit the site, assured of quality downloads. Meanwhile, other ways of profiting include 'premium' registered accounts."

Comments

Re:Really?

[ScentCone]

If that's the real answer (college kids rip stuff off because they're short on cash), why isn't this considered a reasonable tactic for getting better beer than they can afford? If they don't like the price an artist is asking for their work, we'll all just shrug our shoulders at a culture of piracy, but if they don't like the price that a chef or a brewer or a parking lot operator asks for what they do, we should continue to hold people accountable for ripping them off when the only excuse is, "I'm short of cash" ? Of course we shouldn't. Giving people a pass at ripping off frivalous things because they've spent their money on other things is morally toxic. You may want to give the GP a +5 for explaining what is happening, but that ignores the why (a sense of entitlement to others' work) and the consequences of that (an entire generation of whiny parasites that won't understand how destructive they are until they're in their 30's and actually creating something themselves, if they can pry themselves away from Facebook long enough to do so).