The fabulous Internet Archive recently started to offer downloading via bittorrent as well as traditional HTTP.

The Archive explains in its FAQ that you have to use a torrent client that supports 'GetRight-style webseeding', which falls back to HTTP downloading when no-one is seeding the torrent, as will often be the case.

I've tried to use KTorrent to download items via BitTorrent several times, and as expected there are no seeds, but unfortunately KTorrent doesn't seem to be able to fall back to HTTP, so nothing gets downloaded.

I have had success with Internet Archive torrents using Deluge.

Anyone know if webseeding support is a possibility for KTorrent?

is it enabled ?
settings -> configure Ktorrent -> features -> bittorrent -> use webseeds