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How do you feel about the debate that seemingly pits BitTorrent technology authors vs. copyright owners? What about copyrights themselves? Do you support copyright reform, and if so, to what extent?

Ivan:

I hate the fact that BitTorrent is a synonym for copyright infringement, but that’s just the way it is. I don’t read the stuff, and I don’t get too much excited about this.

Joris:

Bittorrent is just a way to transfer files from one computer to another, there are plenty of legal uses for it. I don’t think there has been an attempt to kill it of by suing bittorrent client authors, so for us developers it’s pretty safe from a legal point of view. (Not living in sue happy USA is also a bonus

Piracy is a phenomenon which will always be with us, it’s just so easy to copy digital content and distribute it over the internet. It’s not going away anytime soon, no matter how many people the RIAA sues, no matter how much DRM they put on the latest storage technology.

The music industry will have to live with it, my guess is that they will probably just disappear, or become a very limited marketing industry which works for the artists directly. Which is probably a lot better then we have today for both the music listeners and the artists.

I’m also hoping TV will evolve to a more on demand thing, currently I just download the shows I’m interested in. Maybe that is wrong, but why should I wait until some idiot TV channel boss decides it might be a good idea to show the stuff I’m interested in.

What I would like to see is to be able to have all TV shows and movies produced in the world, accessible to everybody from their couch, you want to see the latest battlestar galactica episode, you just press a few buttons on your remote and it starts playing on your TV. We have the distribution network in place today, it’s just completely illegal, and not as user friendly as I would like to see it.

I certainly think copyright and other forms of intellectual property need some reform, the term is way to long and software patents need to go in the US. I don’t think going all the way and abolishing it, is the right way to go. But I’m in favor of limiting it, in my opinion there is no need for terms like life of author + 70 years, let the authors kids and grandkids make their own money instead of leaching of their ancestors.

What should we expect in the future of KTorrent?

Ivan:

We have some really nice features for KTorrent 2.2. Some great UI changes in my opinion. After that we’ll be focusing on KDE4 port and that will be the real fun

Joris:

The biggest thing on the horizon is the port to KDE 4, which is second priority at the moment until 2.2 is released, then we will fully concentrate on the KDE 4 port this summer, hopefully we will have something by the time the first public releases of KDE 4 are coming out.

The big things I would still like to get into 2.2 are:

1. Per torrent speed limits
2. SOCKS proxy support
3. Continuous disk space checking (the current development version only checks when a torrent is started)

It is possible that some things are shifted to the KDE 4 port, I don’t want to drag on 2.2, it has to be out before the summer so we can focus on the port during the summer.

Do you think KTorrent should be included in the KDE Network package? What are KTorrent’s chances of becoming the most widely used BitTorrent client among desktop Linux users? Would you like that if it happened?

Ivan:

Ah, I would be really, really pleased if this would happen. BitTorrent is widely used protocol these days and KTorrent has matured so I think it would be great to be included in KDE network!

Joris:

I don’t know, I don’t see much benefit in being included in the KDE network package.

Don’t know if that (ed.: most popular BitTorrent client in Linux land) can be possible, I guess it might be possible. it’s not really something I aim for, it would be nice, but I’m not gonna lose any sleep if we are not king of the linux hill

Do you have a blog? Any other way me and our readership could follow your life?

Ivan:

There’s a blogger-wannabe page that I’ve created on http://ktorrent.blogspot.com/ but I somehow lost track of it. I’ll try to be more active in the future.

Joris:

I don’t have the time for blogs, and I don’t think most people would be interested in my life.

Thank you, guys. It’s been a pleasure hosting your thoughts!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 8:54 and is filed under Interviews, KDE, Linux, Software bacán. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.