Comments on BitTyrant
*Initial comments on BitTyrant* I will probably revise these comments when I do more research into the peer-selection algorithm that BitTyrant uses.
While I was at Michigan State University, a fellow group of students did a study into whether they could write a selfish TCP/IP stack. Of course - it's possible. (It also ruins performance of other users)
If the students were to install an OS with a selfish TCP/IP stack onto any network, the network administrator would immediately deny the user's network access, with good reason.
The students at the University of Washington that created BitTyrant created a selfish BitTorrent client.
Selfishness is a funny thing. It's okay if a certain number of people do it, but not okay if everybody does it, as is noted in the last sentence of their pdf presentation: "When all peers behave selfishly, average performance degrades for all peers, even those with high capacity." (link)
This is a common example of the Tragedy of the Commons. There is exciting research in the area of evolutionary biology being conducted by Charles Ofria at Michigan State (http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/projects/) in which altruism is examined in a more measurable way.
Conclusion: Don't use BitTyrant, or any other selfish BitTorrent client.