[Billster]

Originally Posted by BassmanRon

They do enforce a minimum share ratio of 0.25.

I can't tell you how I know that without confessing my own blunders as a bit torrent newbie. The bottom line is, the policy bit me in the hindquarters and ultimately hurts the EZT community, too. Here's what happened:

I installed a Macintosh torrent client, miraculously signed up at EZT on the first try, and downloaded my brains out. I left the torrent windows running overnight. Next morning, only three of the seven downloads had finished but the network was down. I ended up rebooting.

Tried to resume downloads/uploads and hit the barrier: Access Denied because my share ratio had fallen below 0.25. Apparently my choices were not popular enough the night before, or the network died before my uploads ran long enough to keep me above 0.25

Easytree has what is called a "share ratio enforcement level".

In the case of regular users, that level is 5 gigs - meaning if you haven't yet reached 5 gigs, you aren't subject to being banned regardless of share ratio. Every 5 gigs you download, you are assessed as being above or below .25.

So in your example, you downloaded 5 gigs in one night, and not even a complete night at that, since the network went down at some unknown point? Man, I cannot pull very close to 5 gigs a night, and I have broadband.

The share ratio enforcement is a good, prudent idea which among other things enables people to avoid exactly what happened to you - have a bad first day and get locked out as a result.