How do we stop leechers. If we require people to share files they will just share word documents or dummy files something that no one wants. Also they can set up their firewall to not let anyone download from them. What is to be done?

hm ... firstly i think leeching in the meaning of finding a good server, browsing its web-page and getting all the stuff you were looking for anyway from it is ok. i assume you are talking about what is often called "freeloading", i.e. downloading without sharing ...

it ****** me off to have uploads running with >400kb all the time and my downloads won't get above 100kb. also my statistic usually tells about 100% success for uploads and won't get above 30% for downloads. this surely means that the people having a good connection to me (thus i would have a good connection to them) don't share their files. but i keep up the hope they will in the future. might always be the case that one hasn't got files to share (yet) or just doesn't share that kind of files i am looking for. therefore cutting them off really wouldn't help

so keep up the hope. the people who are starting to cut downloads because they _think_ there are non-sharing people at the other end certainly do not make things better.

About the only thing which can be done to stop leechers is to manually block the IP address of each of them.

The client and protocol is open source, so a client could be made to report that files are being shared when they are not. Nothing other than manual IP blocking will work, and with dynamic IPs being more popular, that doesn't always work either.

i don't think with blocking ips you will help the community any further. you never know: it could be a new user (who simple hasn't got anything to share yet) you're blocking, thus making the community less attractive. just imagin you start using the gnutella network and everyone blocks you?!? so keep sharing - they will either realise the spirit, or they won't. but it is surely not worth my and your time to keep looking at who is downloading, what is he sharing and should i block him or not ...

long live p2p

On Audiogalaxy the client forces you to share a folder in which all downloads are stored. If you choose not to keep these files there and don't share them you are limited to a few downloads only.

No-one here cares about AudioGalaxy. Any system that forces compliance upon you can always be tricked.

Secondly, AudioGalaxy is a closed-source client so those of smart enough to use some other non-commercial OS have no use for it. Even if it is open sourced, then anyone can reprogram it to stop the enforcement of file sharing, then everyone will use the modified version.

No matter what you do, you can't force your morality upon others.

Sharing is like being nice to other people. You can't force others to do it. The only thing you can do it be nice to them first (share your files) and hope that they will want to be nice back (share their files too).