Ubuntu developer builds torrent search into operating system

With support from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, a third-party Ubuntu developer is building a torrent search project that may be enabled by default in future versions of the operating system.

Torrent search would be added to Ubuntu's Dash, a central tool that lets users search files and applications on their desktop as well as online sources like Amazon or Wikipedia. The search tool prototype uses the Pirate Bay as a data source. It may be modified to filter out pirated content, but users can change the filters to suit their desires. It's also possible that a future version could use a different data source.

Developer David Callé discussed the possibility of getting the torrents scope enabled by default in the next version of Ubuntu last month on Google+ and got a vote of support from Shuttleworth. "David, let's go ahead," Shuttleworth wrote. "The tool is super-useful and it's perfectly justified to make it available by default. We use Torrents for distributing ubuntu itself. So please don't hold back!"

(UPDATE: After publication, Canonical told Ars that it supports adding torrent search to Ubuntu, but won't use Pirate Bay as a back end. "The notion of including search results for torrents is fair and reasonable, as this is a perfectly legal and legitimate technology," Canonical said. "The way scopes work is that we provide a set of online sources the scope searches (in much the same way the videos scope searches a set of digital video providers). We plan on featuring sources that provide legal torrents such as linuxtracker.org, and while everyone has their own idea of whether the Piratebay is a good or bad thing, we don't currently plan on featuring that as a source within the torrents scope.")

Callé, who is an online communications strategy manager for a small city in France, gave Ars an update on the status of the torrent search project this week. His project was also previously described in TorrentFreak.

"The project is currently waiting on the latest Unity API changes (I expect them to land mid-January in 14.04): they appear to be quite big and I don't want to rush things," Callé wrote in an e-mail. As for when it will be ready, "since most Unity scopes are now on a centralized server instead of being installed on user machines, it's not strictly tied to the Ubuntu release cycle. Even if I would like it to be ready for the next big Ubuntu release day, there is plenty of time to make sure it's in a good enough state to be approved by current testers, people who are going to maintain it (I will be part of it, but not the only one), and those in charge of the centralized scopes server, which is managed by Canonical."

While Shuttleworth likes the idea of the project, it will still have to go through some review at Canonical to be included by default in Ubuntu. "If we include the scope, we obviously want to be careful in terms of our legal obligations, so there is some internal legal and engineering reviews going on along those lines," Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon told Ars.

The tool has been in the prototype stage for more than a year "and has been updated pretty regularly, mostly to follow Unity API changes," Callé explained. "It has a rather small user base, but [users are] interested enough to contribute patches, file bugs, etc. The most recent update is what led to that word from Mark."

If you want to try the prototype, run Ubuntu 13.10 or a pre-release version of 14.04 and type these commands into the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:scopes-packagers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-scope-piratebay

As noted, the prototype uses the Pirate Bay website as a data source. Callé was initially skeptical that Canonical would want the scope enabled by default if it turned up pirated content, writing on Google+, "I'm 99% sure that the functionality would be abused, misinterpreted and would generate a lot of FUD for Ubuntu."

Callé told Ars that the "biggest challenge left" is filtering content by license, and "that will depend a lot on the final data source."

"The Pirate Bay (used by the prototype) has the main benefit of providing ways to filter adult content, but the license filtering can only be done via search keywords, which is less than optimal," he wrote. "One idea I'm currently investigating is to rely on users to flag individual torrents based on their description."

Additionally, Callé told TorrentFreak, "Since Ubuntu is used in a lot of schools and public administrations, my condition for it to be available by default is to have license filtering, to promote works using an open license and public domain content." However, users will have full control over the filters, he said.

As for why Callé thinks it's valuable to search for torrents in the Dash rather than in a Web browser, he told Ars, "The Dash is a special place where we try to remove the boundaries between local and online content. It's not trying to replace the Web browser—it's a different approach. It has many tools you would expect on a modern platform (weather, calculator, notes, etc.), but if you search for 'blender,' to launch or install the [3D graphics] app, you will also get books about Blender (free and non-free), art, videos, latest news, help documents, and even add-ons from github. I like to think of it as a search-by-serendipity engine. Adding torrents is one more way to increase the diversity of results and let users discover new content, with a Free Culture bias in this case."