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Originally Posted by dvdasacd

But the whole politics of bt world is genuinely interesting and even fun to both watch and sometimes be involved in. Politics is not just the fighting side of it - but politics is also about building alliances, making friends, strengthening the larger bt (and even file sharing) community.

That is a very important point you just raised, and one I am a firm believer in. It's easy to get lulled into an insular attitude about your personal favorite communities, and ignore the bigger implications of both the fighting and the cooperation. Problems arise when one voice gets too much influence, but that voice changes from person to person and group to group and the ever changing flow of these politics is indeed fascinating. Especially in light of the fact that there are so many different people from different cultures interacting on a, for the most part, level playing field.


Intr4nsed1t: Sorry I didn't see that post yesterday, but the front page of the index was being lambasted with frivolity, so I lost this thread to the shady crevasses of the back pages of the board :P

Let's talk about BT

Originally Posted by Yoann64

Is not it a bit presumptuous ? I personally always feel "Newbs" because I always find something new to learn.

Of course it's relative. I learn new stuff regarding BT a lot of the time too. I was talking about people who are new to BT, not those who know little about it.

Let's talk about BT

Originally Posted by Intr4ns1t

A student by definition has a desire to learn. If someone does not wish to learn, they are no student. I would love to hear some ideas on how to teach those "average" users though. You can't force someone to read the rules let alone any primer on the commonly accepted "rules" while ignoring the fact that there is no commonly accepted "rules". Most folks that use bit torrent get their exposure from sites like Mininova, Isohunt, TPB and Demonoid at first, so things like ratios and seedtime requirements are foreign to most of them. It's not till they get sick of fakes and infections that they start to seek out more trustworthy sources of media. Then they have to relearn how to torrent, if they care to change their habits.

"There is no bad students, but only bad teachers" is from

There are no bad students, only bad teachers. The child who understands why he was asked to provide such intellectual effort, manual or physical, the child understands that he will use in his life everyday (What is reading, writing, calculation?), that child will be involved in learning and related problems such as discipline diminishes accordingly. For this it is necessary - always ahead of school work - to discuss, argue, to treat children as individuals in their own right and provide the best possible conditions to develop their critical sense.

(sorry, I'm not sure of the translation)
For example, the word "Students" may be replaced by "new users" and the word "teachers" by "staff" or "former users".

Let's talk about BT

Originally Posted by Intr4ns1t

So, in light of the discussion going on in another thread, I thought I would start a thread for everyone to express what they think about this big ball of hobby that is called torrenting. I'll post some questions, but I'm not asking for a list of answers, more your thoughts on the way the bigger circle of society revolving around trackers looks to you. The questions are just there as an idea of what focus I'd like to see this discussion center around.

Why do you use bit torrent, and why to the degree that you use it?

What do you feel is the ideal tracker for you, and are you a member of a site that fills those requirements?

Do you feel you are on enough trackers, and what do you think is too many trackers?

What do you see the politics of BT entailing, and does it affect your actions in this field?

Do you think there is an ethos necessary when interacting, and if so, what does it consist of? By this I mean what do you think the "morals" of BT are, if you think there should be.

I don't know if this is just too general a subject for discussion here, but I'd really like to get a wide view of what people think about this thing we do, and would only ask that people keep it about BT and stay civil.

Intr4ns1t, very interesting thread. I'll try to answer some of your questions as I ramble on with some thoughts.

To begin, a lot of people call Bit Torrenting a hobby. That's fine, but i think that's just a crutch or a safety blanket people use to comfort themselves from the truth that they are breaking the law. Most people here do it, but i don't believe that saying it's a 'hobby' makes it any less wrong. I hear the 'hobby' description a lot in satellite pirating circles. People buy hardware and program it to get free HBO or pron and justify it as a 'hobby'. If that gets you through the day - great, but it's not a 'hobby' you're just stealing. I know I probably will get flamed, but it's the truth. BT is a great way to get what you want. I use BT almost exclusively. It's convenient, somewhat anonymous and generally viewed as a safer way to get anything and everything.

There are tons of trackers out there. Some better then others. Generally, I seem to be able to find mainstream apps, movies and TV on all of them. You can go on the main torrent page of the big 'l33t' trackers and find almost identical listings. Example - Entourage airs Sunday nights on HBO. A few hours later it's on ScL, PTN, FTN, etc... within minutes of each other. So do you really need 10, 20, 30 trackers? Maybe? Maybe Not. Most tracker forums are very similar too. The same discussions, topics, etc...

I belong to several trackers. Sometimes I find it hard to participate in all the different forums. Other times I have to share the downloading so that I am active at all of them. I download one thing from Tracker A, another thing from Tracker B and so forth even thou I could have got all of it from one place. It almost becomes a chore.

As for 'morals', some times it's funny to read some of the posts here. People calling others unethical or bad or traders or whatever as they hide behind their computers secretly 'getting' stuff via BT. It's like the murderer calling the rapist evil. We're all doing something wrong - we just try to justify it by saying the big record companies or movie studios are greedy evil people and it's our right to take what we want.

Just some thoughts....

Let's talk about BT

I want to make a comment about the illegality of torrenting. It has been a running theme that BT is illegal, and I need to point out that this is a patently wrong assumption. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the act of torrenting is not illegal anywhere. It's what you choose to share that makes it illegal.

Quite a few things get shared perfectly legally by people using the BT protocol, and the underlying belief that the act itself is against the law is misleading. I personally know, in real life, several bands who have chosen to use torrnets to get there music out there as it's far cheaper to put your album on a tracker than pay for a bunch of albums and trying to hustle them on street corners or your local pub. Linux has been released via the torrenting protocol for years.

Granted, the VAST majority of files we share are infringing on a copyright of some sort, but the act does not.



I fully agree with this as it parallels my own experiences and I know it to be truth. Hell, I've even passed on offers of a couple of those "dream" trackers as I just don't have the time or energy to be a part of another site that invariably contains many of the same members that I will talk to at several of the other sites I'm on. The observation of that fact in the past is what really cemented the whole idea of a "greater bt community" in my mind tbh, and I know many people use that factor to help advance their knowledge and influence.

I also have seen that last statement in action many times, and it irks me every time I see it.

Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

Originally Posted by sear

There's also the tendency to allow this hobby to interfere with RL. If you can't find that balance then get out now. Nothing on torrents is worth sacrificing a second of real life for.

People always make that distinction and therein lies a lot of the problems.There is only one life this is just another aspect of it .
Act accordingly.

Well said. As was alluded to earlier, the line between rl and the internet is fast becoming blurred, so people have to realize, there isn't the well defined separation that used to exist between the two. It's fast becoming necessary to be the same person in both worlds, for good or bad.

Originally Posted by The_Martinator

The politics as you call them are really a PITA of FST. Fact is most people on invite boards are nice, too nice for some people's liking. Having have spent over a year at a couple such boards I can say most people are genuine in that. Of course some are faking just to get invites, but they show their true colors eventually. FST is a discussion forum, so there's nothing wrong with flaming trackers here (according to the staff here). In my experience the trackers' staRAB will listen to your complaints if you present some arguments and you still remain ''normal'' (saying BMTV sucks coz they have a bad header and they banned me isn't really gonna cut it). The more arguments, the better. By normal I mean the approach, which is more important on teh interwebz than most know. After all, there's no way of knowing that you're an 18 year old blonde with huge knockerz on the net (even with pics one can't be a 100%).

I like this. I like it because it makes clear what should happen to better the bigger community I see around me. For all it's pains, those discussions, heated as they can be, help draw the lines of what entails the "universal rule" of BT, and how we deal with people that don't follow those rules. As technology advances, the rules must change, and as accessibility increases, the rules must change. The only way to reach a common set of rules, is to hash them out in as large a common interest group as possible.

About the people being nice part, isn't that just human nature? We almost universally get taught to be nice to the people around us till given reason not to. It's the people that require a reason to be nice to others before doing so that create the most problems imho, and ther is a HUGE difference between being nice and sucking up.

In my staffing experience, I have found that, as time progresses, it gets harder to make that distinction. In the staff frame of mind, it's our job to be paranoid. With that job comes an inherent level of distrust of people you don't know, and to try to determine if a user is trully just being friendly rather than seeking something beyond just conversation can be a task indeed. I think that often the effort to try to make that decision is secondary to the effort to keep the site that staff member is on in running order.

A complication of that decision process comes in the form the range of languages spoken in this field.

Let's talk about BT

Originally Posted by Intr4ns1t

It may sound like bullshit, but I really do get alot of happiness from this game, and really only want the best for all involved. The more input the better, and yes I have made great efforts to try to keep this thread interactive. It's always a joy to see people, who have the experience that newbs don't, explain how they see things. It can only serve to better the quality of user that all trackers get and that makes everyones experience more positive.

I'd just like to add that I wouldn't mind newbs respond to this thread. No so that I can bash them, but with the intention to see how they see things. Maybe by knowing that the staffers can see which aspects of BT need to be further emphasized...

Or maybe it's just me.

Let's talk about BT

Originally Posted by sear

There was a great tutorial on oink on being a good member of private trackers.

whats your idea of a good member on a torrent site then?coz in my thinking,you can't put a bar on it and say that this is the exemplar for everyone else to look upon.
On the site you patently staff on for example,community comes first or so i've heard and from that I can draw forum activity and IRC being key for anyone to be considered an ideal member.My question then begs,how do you think you are fairing as of this scenario?(90% participation being an A, anything below an F).

To draw a queer parallel,TL(as being a for files tracker)will prune this 10% who aren't using the tracker as its meant to be.It would be informative to know whether you live upto the brand and do actually indeed do something about your bad users as well.

Let's talk about BT

To be honest n00bs answers would interest me on this thread as some real good points have been made. But what a n00b see's about torenting may be completely diff to people who have posted so far
It would also be interesting to find out what sorts of trackers people started off in and what bought them to FSt and if they have changed there views on torrenting since joining here, or simular sites.
Yeah I know a lot to ask for :lol:

Let's talk about BT

Originally Posted by Intr4ns1t

What do you feel is the ideal tracker for you, and are you a member of a site that fills those requirements?

A tracker with lots of good quality music that I like, and yes I got something like that as pretty much my first ever tracker. It's awesome-ness was what got me into checking out other private trackers.

Let's talk about BT

Originally Posted by kallieb

The difference in this thread, as opposed to one's started by those named and others, is that the intent here is on debate, exploration and invitation to anyone wanting a good convo - see where it goes so to speak - rather than some veiled and cynical means to poke fun, flame, or pursue an agenda.

It's been an interesting read so far. Thanks to the op for opening it up

It may sound like bullshit, but I really do get alot of happiness from this game, and really only want the best for all involved. The more input the better, and yes I have made great efforts to try to keep this thread interactive. It's always a joy to see people, who have the experience that newbs don't, explain how they see things. It can only serve to better the quality of user that all trackers get and that makes everyones experience more positive.