I was wondering when this debate would show itself here at NU. The problem I have with leeches is that it ruins it for the nice people who are sharing. You know the users that share 10 gigs or more but are always in que for downloads. I've been in this situation myself and have found it frustrating to see my uploads busy with activity but my downloads are taking a vacation.
I try to take a sane approach to this leeching matter and just check my uploads for leechers whenever I come back to check on my downloads. I'm sure that several leeches have gotten something off of me, but some programs like Morpheus makes it very inconvenient to stop leechers. Within the realm of sanity, I do what I can to help the poor bastard sharing gigs of data so that he/she doesn't have to wait to the end of time to start their downloads from me.
Although, I do give some slack to users downloading very slowly from me. I guess the leeching wouldn't be so bad if it was a smaller percentage, but come on, the last time I checked it was roughly over 60% of users on Morpheus....that's too much. A lot of them are broadband users too. I guess that's one of the reasons why Morpheus/Kazaa/Groskter are so popular...the leeches can reasonably get what they want without sharing. I've heard some users complain about other programs requiring that everyone shares.
We could always make the RIAA happy and just all leech and not share with each other. (sorry about the sarcastic comment, had to get it out)
Although, I agree with TG in that there are some users who have legitimate reasons for leeching. Just hope that percentage doesn't climb to 90% or we'll all have a fun time trying to download anything.