Hi I'm the original author. Sorry to see that you got downvoted because it's a good question and a real limitation of my project. I might get around to building

Hi I'm the original author. Sorry to see that you got downvoted because it's a good question and a real limitation of my project. I might get around to building a follow-up some day with upload/sharing since that's where the actual interesting stuff happens (and not just shuffling bits around, with a shitty download algorithm tacked on like in my post). No real plans though. If I do that then I might have to rewrite some of the code and edit parts of the blog post, since I've grown as an engineer and writer since I made this two years ago. As for your question of "Is that tolerated?" the question is a social one. As the sibling commenter pointed out, if you use a private tracker, you're part of a community that often has a social contract (implicit or explicit) that participation means you need to contribute back and have a good seeding ratio. In that case, only downloading -- like my client does -- is not tolerated and might get you banned. That's why I chose to demo with torrenting a Linux ISO, since those tend to be public, have a lot of seeders anyway, and don't really care how much you upload or download. There's nothing in the protocol that says you have to do it, and indeed, there are even "selfish" algorithms that try to maximize download speed while uploading nothing in return: https://www.wired.com/2007/01/bittorrent-bullies-bittyrant-and-bitthief/ https://www.wired.com/2007/01/bittorrent-bullies-bittyrant-a...