One of the (many) complaints that people had with the BBC iPlayer was that their processing power and bandwidth was being used even when they didn’t have the iPlayer application loaded.
While some of the more technically minded might have known that this would have been the case by default, the majority – and let’s not forget that this is a service aimed at the general public – had not clue about it.
We see today that the BBC has now offered an option in the iPlayer software to turn off sharing.
Under settings, near the bottom there’s an option under Peer-to-peer Network Participation. By unclicking this option your machine won’t be used to share the BBC’s content around, when you exit the iPlayer download manager.
Be aware that your bandwidth/processor will still be used while the download manager is loaded.
It’s also worth pointing out that the whole of iPlayer’s P2P structure would fall apart if no-one opted to share their content.
Hats off the BBC for having listened to people concerns and acted on it … just a few more, like not being dedicated to a Microsoft only platform to correct now :)
It’s a bit selfish, turning off the participation in the file sharing network! Still, it slows your downloads, so that’s OK.