Stream PirateBay movies directly from CLI

I think the proper swarmed streaming solution is to make the percentage chance of requesting the rarest chunk be a smooth function of the number of replicas of the rarest chunk. If the rarest chunk has only one source, the probability should be 1.0. If there are multiple chunks that are all the most rare, you probably want to randomly select which chunk to request next, with an approximately exponential distribution rather than uniform distribution. Y probability of selecting the first chunk, Y^2 for the second, Y^3 for the third, etc. You'd want to run some simulations to fine-tune the probability function and also the Y percentage.

What I did for LimeWire was (1) if the MIME type wasn't on a streamable whitelist, download all chunks in randomized order. (2) if the file was a streming type and less than 10% complete, start downloading the available chunk closest to the front of the file that isn't currently in progress (3) if the file is a streamable type and 10% to N% complete, randomly select either in-order or randomized selection with probability X. (4) beyond N% complete, always use random chunk selection. I'm pretty sure N was 50 and nearly certain X was 0.5. I originally proposed making X a smooth function of the % downloaded instead of 0, 0.5. 1.0 stair-steps, but the lead developer strongly preferred stair-steps.

The random selection algorithm actually tried to keep the number of ranges of bytes (extents) below 5. So even after 50% downloaded, you still have a 25% chance of getting in-order downloading.

The reason I used randomization instead of rarest-first was that it was my first change to LimeWire, and this was the least invasive change to make. At that time, LimeWire had a global list of verified downloaded chunks and a global list of in-progress chunks, but no global counter for number of replicas.

Probably never, and that's fine. At least not until the avalanche of inevitability gets rolling and then it doesn't matter, and that's fine too. That's just how real social change happens. First you get the majority on board, then the rest is just bookkeeping.

Nobody "as a community" stopped "cheekily tolerating" casual cannabis use and "finally stood up", but tolerance got so ubiquitous that suddenly the "squares" were out of touch and suddenly has to "stand up" for what was already the law -- not the other way around.

I'm pretty sure "cheekily tolerating" homosexuality also cumulatively did more for gay rights than "standing up" did.

The GPL depends on copyright to protect programmers freedoms & the public domain from appropriation.

Is this a technologic or moral problem and can laws solve it ?

Is easy to feel that the issue is artists should be paid, but if one is poor then access to culture and information can be simply unaffordable.

Everyone listens to more music than they can buy. Truefans moreso.

For most artists obscurity is the issue and realistically the big studios/ labels steal more from artists than anyone.

A tricky moral issue that could trivially be solved with strong government and enforced licenses like they did for radio & libraries.

Just like artists get paid when the radio plays a song, it should be the same for sharing, remixing & mashups.

But lobbies legislate these issues, so the monopoly of ludditism prevails.

IMHO false scarcity of knowledge is immoral and unnecessary and if we ever going to get off planet before a meteor hits we must advance beyond the Status Quo.