Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Here is the thing, bulk downloading is generally an inefficient use of bandwidth. If I download 50 books and only read 5 of them then I have roughly used 10 times more bandwidth than I actually needed. All that wasted bandwidth does in fact have a cost. The more torrents that are running, the more bandwidth being occupied, which means the ISPs have to upgrade their infrastructure; you know we are paying for those upgrades. Granted the cost, when we are talking books, is pretty small compared to audio and video files, but that doesn't mean its not wasteful of bandwidth.
I am frankly dubious of the claims that anyone saves any significant (if any) time by using torrents. Sure you don't have to spend as much time browsing through books online, but if you plan on reading some of them, you will need to on your own computer. No one has yet actually really demonstrated that it really saves them time (Saying it saves them time is not the same as demonstrating it).
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Bill
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Firstly, Torrenting is actually an extremely efficient distribution of bandwidth, which is why most Linux distros are distributed via torrents. It removes the bandwidth demands on the host server and efficiently distributes it amongst all clients. If anything, it would save MR a bunch in hosting fees due to lower bandwidth usage on their servers.
Secondly, You don't have to "waste" bandwidth. When you download a torrent, you get a list of all files and directories in the torrent (unless it is zipped/RARed). You can easily and quickly check the requisite boxes to download all the books that you are interested in. Usually, if the torrent is well compiled (as is the case many times) then everything is arranged alphabetically by author name. It is much much faster than searching on MR for specific books. You wanted proof, and I will be glad to stand by the fact that it is far easier and faster to access books you want to read via torrents.
Thirdly, Comparing bandwidth use to rising costs for ISPs is a bit silly. Watching two streaming Netflix movies will use up far more bandwidth than the entire Gutenberg collection. ISPs would hardly even register any extra bandwidth even if we assumed that everyone downloaded every single Gutenberg ebook (even though most would download a smaller subset, something that is easy enough to do via torrents)
Obviously no-one here is saying that MR and all the uploaders here HAVE to or SHOULD provide it in torrent form. It is their prerogative, but it is certainly more easily accessible and useful (at least for quite a few folks).