3mo ago

How to block Stremio peers from qBittorrent?

Not only Stremio, I heard there are other apps that do the same thing Stremio does, which is only leech and not seed.

From my research, the suggestions I found were :

Disable DHT
Use blocklists (I am also looking for suggestions, currently considering using this one)

There were also suggestions to block by PeerID, however Stremio generates a spoofed PeerID.

I also learned that Stremio only works if the tracker allows magnet links, but this doesn't seem something actionable on the peer level.

Is there anything else I am missing?

7 comments

How to block Stremio peers from qBittorrent?
You can't AFAIK.
Disable DHT
Don't do that, DHT is one of the baseline methods of public torrenting. You'll just end up cutting yourself off from tons of public torrent peers.
Unclear why you think DHT is strictly something specific to Stremio (?)
Use blocklists (I am also looking for suggestions, currently considering using this one)
That doesn't sound overly reliable, I'd guess if you want to go that route you probably want to install all their stuff including that peerbanhelper thing they are relying on. If you do all that feel free to report back to the community and let us know if it actually blocked Stremio clients for you.
Some things you could try:
In qBittorrent you could try using a different Upload Choking Algorithm, it's not a real solution but it does help. (Tools / Options / Advanced / Upload Choking Algorithm) There you can try setting it to Anti-Leech or Round-Robin.
Anti-Leech is an attempt to stop uploading to peers that seem to request data while trying to mask their activity (e.g. leeching clients), it's not perfect but can help. See https://www.libtorrent.org/reference-Settings.html#enum-seed-choking-algorithm-t and https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/4217 for more discussion.
Round-Robin isn't blocking leeching, what it does is tell your torrent client to split the upload evenly between the requesting peers on a torrent. The result is that you will be uploading slower to a leeching client so those type of clients will prefer to get their upload from other faster peers rather than wait on yours.
If you're desperate you could switch to an alternate torrent client, something like https://github.com/c0re100/qBittorrent-Enhanced-Edition it's not an official qBittorrent client but rather qBittorrent with some anti-leech additions. They mainly focus on chinese leeching clients so I'm not sure that would help at all with Stremio but you could try opening an issue if it looks like Stremio clients are still leeching off it, maybe the devs can figure something out https://github.com/c0re100/qBittorrent-Enhanced-Edition/issues
Me personally I don't worry about this stuff, for public torrents qBittorrent along with Round-Robin or Anti-Leech is enough. Otherwise just stick to private trackers where this sort of leeching is a non-issue.
PS - The more active piracy community is over at !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com you may want to subscribe there too.
- Thank you for the detailed reply.
  I am indeed considering using the peerbanhelper. I will install it and see how it works.
  I didn't say DHT was strictly something specific to Stremio. I mentioned it was what was being suggested by people trying to solve the issue, but I indeed didn't find anything to support it.
  I changed the upload choking algorithm, thank you for the suggestion.
  I am aware of !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com but I'd rather avoid the AI slop.
Unless you have a complete list of confirmed Streamio client IPs, you really can't.
I thought Stremio is a media center similar to jellyfin?
- Popular add-ons enable on-the-fly playback of torrents as they are downloaded, typically linked to an accompanying debrid service that handles all the dirty work for a small fee.
  
  That sounds horrible

7 comments