Leeching
Encyclopedia
- In pre-scientificScienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
medicineMedicineMedicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, leeching was an alternative form of bloodlettingBloodlettingBloodletting is the withdrawal of often little quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were considered to be "humors" the proper balance of which maintained health...
in which "bad" bloodBloodBlood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....
would be removed via leechLeechLeeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea. Like other oligochaetes such as earthworms, leeches share a clitellum and are hermaphrodites. Nevertheless, they differ from other oligochaetes in significant ways...
es instead of by bleedingBleedingBleeding, technically known as hemorrhaging or haemorrhaging is the loss of blood or blood escape from the circulatory system... - Leeching may also refer to the practice of benefitting from others' actions without contributing in kind. For example:
- In peer-to-peerPeer-to-peerPeer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
file sharingFile sharingFile sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
networksComputer networkA computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
, leeching is downloading while uploading little or nothing - In bittorrent, leeching is only downloading, while not sharing pieces of what you have downloaded with others. This is, however, luckily practically removed by the use of a trackerBitTorrent trackerA BitTorrent tracker is a server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. It is also, in the absence of extensions to the original protocol, the only major critical point, as clients are required to communicate with the tracker to initiate downloads...
, which monitors your up/down ratio and speeds up your downloads if you upload more, or even doesn't let you download at all if you don't maintain a certain quota. - More generally, it is used as a term for certain types of bandwidth theft
- In video games, leeching refers to the practice of a playerPlayer characterA player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
joining a group for the explicit purpose of gaining rewards while negligibly contributing to the efforts necessary to acquire those rewards. This behavior may be accepted in efforts to powerlevel players. Usually it is considered poor behavior to leech without permission from the group.
- In peer-to-peer