Disable Private-Bit

[darwinsmunky]

Ive been trying to spread a torrent that had been deleted by the original creator and have run into a problem uploading the original torrent. It still has seeds on it and id hate to go through the agony of being the sole uploader of a 100gig file...The problem ive run into is that when i try to upload this torrent i receive a msg telling me that its a private-bittorrent. Something like that. Is there any way to disable this without damaging the integrity of the torrent, without losing the people already connected to it yet expanding it to different sites?

[moogly]

No, you can't.

The torrent you're trying to upload has the private flag and this option is included in the info dictionary of the .torrent.

So if you make public the .torrent (by recreating a new one without the private flag), its hash will change and you will lost the current swarm.

[darwinsmunky]

I know creating a new torrent will do that, but what im wondering is if there is anyway to edit the actual code of the torrent and change the setting from within while keeping the hash intact. Ive opened them up before and dabbled around, very blindly, but it is possible, i just dont know the specific line to be changed.

[GTHK]

Changing the flag in a torrent file will change the hash.

[Lord Alderaan]

The info-hash isn't a value in the .torrent file. It is a hash computed using the values in the info dictionary of the .torrent file.

So if you change any of the values in the info dictionary a different hash will be computed.