I have talked to a couple of leeches lately instead of cutting them off. One told me that s/he was “one of the original Napsters”, had just done a reformat and would be adding a 100Gig collection later that day. Another told me they were setting up a machine for a friend, and would certainly be explaining to the friend. Another just said “this is all I can share at the moment”.
Anyway, whether I believed them or not, I let the leeches download what they wanted, and chatted about the music. The files I let them have were original, and it struck me that by being nice to a leech, these files are also more likely to be available to others when I am offline. Presuming, that is , that the leeches are not the mean type that purposefully empty their shared folders. For the record, I believe that most leeches are not this kind of mean type. I confess that the first time I ever used Napster in the early days I was on a PC that had no music library at all ! I was using the program to build a library and liven up a dull, workplace PC!! Similarly, I have also been in a position where system maintenance, rebuilding etc. has meant that I am on WinMX, but with no files at all in my library. Temporarily of course.
All things considered it struck me that leeches are necessary for the healthy running of the network, for this reason I have no interest in Leech Hammer or MXMonitor. In fact, I blame these programs for giving me short shrift when I have been in a compromised situation. Am I right ? It is healthy for Winmx if we are nice to leeches once in a while, & make an effort to find out where they are coming from ?
Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere.
