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Why is seeding a torrent helpful? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I keep seeing in forums and sites like these that say it's frowned upon to not seed torrents that you use/used. I saw a post on here or Reddit (I don't remember) with a guy ecstatic that someone started seeding his download he had been trying to get done for months. I know seeding lets someone download something using your computer but how is it helpful if someone doesn't have a site and/or isn't "in-range" ?

If you can't tell, I don't know much about how torrenting works other than how to download something using one. I hope that you all can just explain or point me in the right direction because I would like to support the community.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago

When you download a torrent, you're downloading it from someone else's computer. That 'someone else' is usually an individual, not some file sharing site with redundant servers.

When you download a torrent, someone had to send it. It's a small cost for individual torrents, but they had to pay for energy, internet connection, hard drives etc. If more people seed the torrent, you get a small bit of it from each seed, spreading the burden.

If no-one with the torrent has their computer on and seeding it, you cannot download the file, because there is no-one to download it from. If there are several seeds with the torrent, then you can still download it even if one or more seeds turn the computer off at night, delete the file, or are overloaded.