1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
|
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Private bittorrent trackers are markets</title>
<style>
@font-face {
font-family: 'Quattrocento';
font-weight: 400;
src: url(/fonts/quattrocento-latin.woff2) format('woff2');
font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Open Sans';
font-weight: 300;
src: url(/fonts/open-sans-latin.woff2) format('woff2');
font-display: swap;
}
body {
font-family: 'Quattrocento', serif;
font-size: 20px;
line-height: 1.5em;
margin: 0 auto;
max-width: 60ch;
padding: 1em 0.5em;
background: #fff;
color: #111;
}
@media (min-width: 40em) { body { padding: 1em 2em; } }
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
body { background: #1a1a1a; color: #ddd; }
a { color: #adf; }
a:visited { color: #c9a0ff; }
hr { border-top-color: #444; }
}
h1, h2 { font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; }
h1 { font-weight: 300; }
h2 { font-weight: 400; margin-top: 2em; }
.meta { font-size: 0.85em; color: #666; margin-top: -0.5em; }
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { .meta { color: #999; } }
hr { border: none; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; margin: 2em 0; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Private bittorrent trackers are markets</h1>
<hr>
<p>Private bittorrent trackers have a currency called ratio, which is the bits you
upload divided by the bits you download.</p>
<p>You have to keep the ratio above a certain lower limit, otherwise you get banned
from the market or have to cut a deal with the moderators → bankruptcy.</p>
<p>New liquidity is introduced to the market by so-called "freeleech" events or tokens,
which essentially allow you to exchange a token (or some time in the case of
time-restricted freeleech) for some data, which can then be seeded to generate
future profits without spending ratio.</p>
<p>Sometimes, ratio is pulled from the market by allowing to exchange it into website
perks, like forum titles or other benefits like chat-memberships. This has a
deflationary effect. It could be compared to "vanity items" in MMOs, which don't
grant a mechanical advantage in the market. Is there a real-world equivalent?
i.e. allowing rich people to exchange some of their worth for vanity items instead
of investing it for future gain?</p>
<p>Sometimes, ratio can be traded for more than just transferred bits, for example by
requesting a torrent for a certain album or movie, paying some ratio for the
fulfillment of the request.</p>
<hr>
<p>Based on how bittorrent works, usually multiple people "seed" a torrent. This means
multiple people can answer a request for trading ratio. Part of the request (e.g. the
first 30% of a movie) can be fulfilled by one party, part of it by a second or even
more parties.</p>
<p>For small requests (e.g. albums), often the time between announcing the trade and
filling the trade is important for who is able to fill it. Getting a 1 second
head-start vastly increases your chance of a handshake and starting the transmission,
so on average you get a vastly higher ratio gain from that torrent. Meaning that using
a bittorrent client which is fast to answer as a seeder will lead to better outcomes.
This could be compared to mechanisms seen in high-speed trading.</p>
<hr>
<p>Of course these market-mechanisms are in service of a wider policy goal, which is to
ensure the constant availability of as much high-quality data as possible. There are
more mechanisms at play on these trackers that all contribute to this goal (possible
keywords to research: trumping, freeleech for underseeded torrents).</p>
<p>In general, it is important to remember that markets are only a tool, never an end
in themselves, as neoliberalists would like us to believe. They always are in service
of a wider goal or policy. We live in a society.</p>
</body>
</html>
|