chitchat17 wrote: Thu Aug 24, 2023 2:03 am
Thanks for your reply. A quick question, why don't to you guys use torrent for p2p or normal file sharing sites like mega or bunkr?
If only there were a "quick" answer. This REALLY needs an answer by someone who has been here longer than I have. (Myself, less than 4 years.) I can only make a few points. Of course, ANYONE is perfectly free to search the 19 years of posts here to read what has been said about it in the past. They do not even need to log in. If there is not a FAQ topic on the subject, too bad. I have no interest in making that search myself, nor in maintaining in my memory the same old arguments from years past. Once I made the initial effort to get eMule working (which can be substantial for some people, I admit) I found it easy to continue using.
Bunkr: what the heck is that?
Is it free, or Premium? A major problem with free file-sharing sites is that files get taken down readily or sharing space is limited. If someone wants a file again then it has to be fully reuploaded with new links before they can start downloading. With eMule, a file is available as soon as someone puts it in their shared folder. With some file-sharing sites an interrupted download can NOT be resumed. (This is less a problem these days with the use of certain downloaders.) With P2P / eMule, no one needs to maintain a continuous connection and downloads are easily resumed. It is a matter of chance with sources and peers being online at the same time: this is simultaneously both an advantage and a disadvantage, obviously. Patience is often required.
MEGA used to be good as a file-sharing site but it has recently tightened its restrictions, so that larger files sit behind a Premium paywall. It is all too easy for different users around the world to pick and choose their own Premium file sharing site, while eMule is free. File-sharing sites that used to be fairly reliable have disappeared entirely with all their files.
As for the other big p2p method, torrenting, its use has certainly grown as eMule's has waned. Resharing torrent files to an existing "historical" torrent is a little more difficult than simply putting it in a shared foler, but it is not impossible: even *I* figured it out on my own. When FLM began, eMule was more common than it is now and torrenting was just another method. However, torrenting is still largely dependent on centralized servers maintaining the .torrent hashes rather than literally being Peer-to-Peer. An eMule file reshared on eMule always automatically rehashes out the same and is identified as the same, while creating a new torrent always creates a new hash.
The attitude to other sharing methods at FLM has changed over the years. It seems that formerly they were treated with some antagonism.
Currently, direct-download and torrents ARE allowed here and what alternate methods are chosen are user-dependent, but with the expectation that out of courtesy they should be free. However,
to make a file a RELease it has to be shared on eMule. If it is only shared by other means then it remains a "Request", which is now simply a matter of semantics. Many members also routinely provide other sharing methods in addition to eMule, and some are unable to eMule entirely. I have yet to see a single person who provided as a source a torrent file that they have created new or reseeded from no sources after years lying dormant. Perhaps someone did so secretly and simply pretended that they found it currently live. (I myself have re-added myself as a seeder to a torrent that was not technically dead, so that does not count.)
If any oldtimer here cares to provide a (shorter?) pro-eMule response other than "FLM tradition" then that is up to them.