document: Economics of BitTorrent communities Over the years , private file-sharing communities built on the BitTorrent protocol have developed their own policies and mechanisms for motivating members to share content and contribute resources . By requiring members to maintain a minimum ratio between uploads and downloads , private communities effectively establish credit systems , and with them full-fledged economies . We report on a half-year-long measurement study of DIME -- a community for sharing live concert recordings -- that sheds light on the economic forces affecting users in such communities . A key observation is that while the download of files is priced only according to the size of the file , the rate of return for seeding new files is significantly greater than for seeding old files . We find via a natural experiment that users react to such differences in resale value by preferentially consuming older files during a ` free leech ' period . We consider implications of these finding on a user 's ability to earn credits and meet ratio enforcements , focusing in particular on the relationship between visitation frequency and wealth and on low bandwidth users . We then share details from an interview with DIME moderators , which highlights the goals of the community based on which we make suggestions for possible improvement .
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