I have been maintaining 1.5 ratio and uploaded several GB as well. I'm paid member and i was given 20GB of free download but i maintained the ratio from beginning that's because once 20GB was over it would be very hard to pick up on ratio.

I'm just telling all this because i read somewhere that this is for new members to know there is something called as seeding..... well almost everyone who knows what is torrent means they know what is seeding..... but due to their bandwidth or something they don't want to seed......