19 Mar
2007
19 Mar
'07
3:40 p.m.
der Mouse wrote:
Yes you do. Don't feed me that line without backing it up. proftpd has
had bandwidth controls for years; Linux has had them for almost a
decade, and I would imagine that BSD does too. Hell, I host stuff out
of my house, and my $40 router has QoS.
Perhaps the person was interested in helping people
who actually ahve a
need for them, instead of feeding leeches.
The leeches have a need as well.
2. QoS has
been around for over a decade, both software and hardware.
Put bandwidth controls on your stuff if you fear it will cost you
money. My FTP server limits to 16KB/s because I pay for my
bandwidth.
I don't have any easy
way to place bandwidth limits on my FTP server. I have trouble thinking any of us who run anon FTP
sites are likely to react otherwise.
I've run FTP archives since 1994, including a portion of the world's
largest for a few years, and at no time did we prevent leeches. We
limited connections such that the maximum number of users were all
guaranteed a modicum of bandwidth (such as 10KB/s) but we didn't take
any other steps than that.
I am repeatedly flabbergasted that people intentionally limit archives
they host. What is the damn point of hosting files if you don't want
them downloaded? I repeat, has nobody learned anything from the Don
Maslin incident? I have always wanted as many copies of my archives in
the hands of other people as possible, because when I go away, my
archives go away, and if there are no other mirrors then all of my
cataloging work would have been for nothing.
I've had the same discussion, basically, with
qmail fans. They too
seem to think that it's sane to take the stance "I should be able to
grab all I want, and if you don't want me to you should make sure I
can't". The concept that computers are used by humans and that
politeness is important to humans seems completely lost on them. (And
yes, I've had to put automated defenses in place against qmail's
commonest form of abuse - connection-bombing receiving mailservers.)
That is not the same thing as downloading files from an archive or
repository. The only connecting thread is bandwidth utilization;
otherwise that analogy does not apply.
You are asked to not abuse something provided free.
You are arguing
"you should make it impossible to abuse". True or false, that does
not, repeat DOES NOT, excuse your abusing it, or attempting to.
Downloading files from the archive is not abuse!! Repeatedly connecting
and locking other people out -- that's abuse. That is not the same
thing. It is entirely possible to mirror a site without bringing it to
its knees. Not all leechers are abusive.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/