leechers, peers that download more than they upload, are a threat to peer-to-peer file sharing and the practice of seeding. where the goal of seeding is to upload more than to download, thus contributing to the sharing of content, leechers stop uploading as soon as their download is finished. what this means is that seeders must upload more parts of the data bulk in order to guarantee a healthy download. leeching is also referred to as free-riding, temporal downloading users that, by not seeding, do not support the distribution of content.