Poll: Piracy and Seeding Practices

[FirstNameLastName]

<color=red>Disclaimer!
This is a discussion about certain aspects of piracy. As such, I ask that you resist the temptation to admit to or advocate such actions as it is against the Code of Conduct, and I'd rather not see this devolve into a ban-fest (the CoC seems somewhat wishy-washy as to whether even the discusion itself is allowed, but it seems to be permissible).

So, this is not really a discussion about the morality of piracy itself, but rather, the morality and perception of seeding within the piracy com -- oh, I mean, """file-sharing""" community. It's something I've seen that both fascinates and baffles me at the same time. Overall, a lot of pirates seem to see seeding as not just the right thing to do, but some kind of moral obligation. Not seeding is often seen as selfish, destructive, and even down right immoral; almost unanimously taboo. This is something that amuses me to no end, since when you really look at it, not seeding is pretty much the equivalent of pirating from pirates. I'm surprised at the lack of self-awareness from people who download content without contributing anything back to the creators, yet, are suddenly filled with self-righteousness when people do the same, but contribute nothing back to other pirates.

So, rather than poke fun at the hypocrisy, let me instead get to the point of this thread. What do you think is the morality of seeding torrents, or lack there of? I'm not asking about the morality of piracy itself, but specifically of seeding.
If we assume that piracy itself is immoral, morally questionable, or even just plain neutral, then what basis is there to claim that not seeding is in some way wrong because it impedes people's ability to perform such actions?

Personally, while having mixed thoughts on piracy itself, I think that it's at very least morally questionable, so, it seems to me that helping others to do something morally questionable is not really something to be proud of. Piracy itself is inherently selfish, yet, helping others to do something selfish is somehow seen as less selfish. Honestly, I feel it's actually better not to seed since, while downloading someone's work for free seems bad enough, going out of your way to help others do likewise just adds insult. Not seeding just leaves less of an impact, so, even if piracy itself is immoral, it seems at least slightly less immoral.

I guess this all more or less ties into my contempt for this idea of a "piracy movement", as if piracy is some kind of ideal to strive for. I've never understood why people are so adverse to the truth that they just want free stuff. Instead, they wrap it up as some kind of ideology. Well, actually, that's kind of obvious; they're insecure about their own morality.

Still, I'm not sure why people are so surprised that someone who is selfish enough to download someone's work for free would also be apathetic towards the supposed plight of other pirates.

I'm aware that perhaps this thread may turn into nothing more than an echo chamber, since advocating for piracy seems to me like an essential step in establishing some kind of moral obligation for seeding. Even so, what are your thoughts on the matter?

 

[manic_depressive13]

Yeah, people want free stuff. If everyone leeches and no one seeds, they can't have the free stuff. The whole system relies on reciprocity.

Man, I had a really hard time coming up with that one.

 

[mad825]

It really depends on a P2P network. It's easier to keep smaller files going as opposed to larger ones, if you're seeding a small file then you should really try uploading 14x the size of the file to keep the torrent healthy and for large ones you can get away with 2x-3x of the original size.

If you're hosting a torrent then expect to keep it going for at least a month. Most developers keep supporting the torrent file until it goes out of date if it is a patch.

 

[IceForce]

It's important to remember that some people still have data caps in this day and age. And uploads count towards that cap.
Therefore, you can get more out of your data limit by not bothering to seed/upload.

I think you're overthinking it.

 

[DEAD34345]

Well, it obviously just depends on your opinion of piracy to begin with. If you think piracy is immoral, then of course it follows that helping others to pirate is also immoral. If you consider piracy to be a moral good (or, more likely, morally neutral) then helping others to do it is a nice, moral thing to do.

The pirates' opinions on seeding therefore make a lot of sense, because they (presumably) don't think piracy is immoral. It's only hypocritical if you come at it from the perspective that piracy is bad to begin with, or "morally questionable" as you've put it.

Edit: Also, I kind of love the idea of the "piracy movement" as you've put it. It's why the whole narrative of pirates being selfish thieves simply doesn't make sense to me. Piracy can only exist because the pirates themselves act so selflessly, the whole thing is a giant system of people sharing things freely with one another without receiving anything in return. Any one of them could easily defect and simply download without ever seeding, but obviously very few do, or it would all just fall apart. That's not to mention the people who crack and upload files to begin with are also doing so completely for free.

Just to be clear by the way, I'm not justifying or advocating piracy itself here. I'm simply saying it's obvious that pirates themselves act the way they do because they don't consider piracy to be immoral to begin with, and not because they're just selfish or mean or whatever. This explanation makes a lot more sense and leaves me with a lot more faith in humanity than the frankly ridiculous alternative that anti-piracy campaigns tend to push, directly comparing pirates to thieves and the like.

 

[Loonyyy]

Seeding is better.

The idea with torrenting is that users share from each other. Like you said, not seeding is like pirating from pirates, and pirating is wrong. And while it's tempting to apply some two wrongs make a right reasoning there, the thing is that the person who isn't seeding chose to associate with that community, and didn't want to abide by the conditions and traditions of it. So they're doing the wrong thing by the content creators and the pirates.

This doesn't just apply to piracy, some people legitimately use torrents to share things, and if people stop seeding, then that download is dead, and they better have a conventional download elsewhere. Even conventional downloads eventually die, I just had to install Teamspeak from scratch because there were no mirrors left for the next update.

I also think that the more philosophical, or even pseudo-political pirates are ridiculous (The biggest clown being Kim Dotcom), but if you're entering into any sort of community, then you're obliged to do the basic things that keep that running. Seeding is like paying taxes.

 

[DoPo]

It's important to remember that some people still have data caps in this day and age. And uploads count towards that cap.
Therefore, you can get more out of your data limit by not bothering to seed/upload.

I think you're overthinking it.

Some people even have asymmetric bandwidth, say, if they are on ADSL. This, in turn, makes large uploads vastly inferior and, generally, not worth bothering with, even if they have no data cap. Source: been on ADSL without data cap, seeding torrents ranges from a pain to impossibility.

 

[Leg End]

So, is this a discussion to the morality of cutting and running after snagging a torrent or seeding pirated content?

If the former, ignoring the implications leaning toward the latter. Universal rule of not being a dick when torrenting anything period is seed the damn thing otherwise you have no right to complain when something you try to get has no seeders. Well, you don't have a right to complain at all technically in most cases, but it's funny if you don't seed and it bites you in the ass.

This counts for anything being torrented.