"This is a huge difference from BitTorrent where the only way to get content is to run your own software, and when you download something you also share it, by default."
As far as I understand this isn't a solved technical problem - but mostly a cultural quirk and probably just due to how the early torrent clients were configured
There is for instance a major Chinese torrent client (that name escapes me) that doesn't seed by default - so the whole thing could have easily not worked. If IPFS clients don't seed by default then that kinda sounds like either a design mistake or a "culture problem"
I've always wondered if there was a way to check if a client is reseeding (eg. request and download a bit from a different IP) and then blacklist them if they provide the data (or throttle them or something)
They probably don’t seed by default for a good reason. While torrents aren’t inherently political unlike signal and others, their culture is close to “legal ussues”. As a seeder I respect that and that’s why I’m seeding to high ratios. For every seeder of a specific piece of content there are 10x (20x? 50x?) more people who cannot share it back.
But if you want to fence them off, you can use private trackers with ul/dl ratio accounting.
As far as I understand this isn't a solved technical problem - but mostly a cultural quirk and probably just due to how the early torrent clients were configured
There is for instance a major Chinese torrent client (that name escapes me) that doesn't seed by default - so the whole thing could have easily not worked. If IPFS clients don't seed by default then that kinda sounds like either a design mistake or a "culture problem"
I've always wondered if there was a way to check if a client is reseeding (eg. request and download a bit from a different IP) and then blacklist them if they provide the data (or throttle them or something)