Leeching
- In pre-scientific medicine, leeching was an alternative form of blood letting in which "bad" blood would be removed via leeches instead of by bleeding.
- Leeching may also refer to the practice of benefitting from others' actions without contributing in kind. For example:
- In peer-to-peer file sharing networks, leeching is downloading files without sharing any.
- More generally, it is used as a term for certain types of bandwidth theft.
- In online computer games (especially role-playing games), leeching refers to the practice of a player joining a group for the explicit purpose of gaining rewards without contributing anything to the efforts necessary to acquire those rewards. Sometimes this is allowed in an effort to powerlevel a player. Usually it is considered poor behavior to do this without permission from the group.
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See also: Leeching, Bandwidth theft, Bleeding, Blood, Blood letting, Computer game, File sharing, Leech, MMORPG
