Pirates of the Amazon

Just as we are starting to spread the word about the legitimate uses of bit torrent file sharing, another tool appears that basically shows up what the vast majority of torrent traffic is: Pirates of the Amazon. The tool is a Greasemonkey add-on for the Firefox browser that adds extra links to the results of an Amazon search providing file sharers with direct links to the torrents so that instead of going via the checkout they can break the law and download copyright material via the torrent networks without paying a dime.

The release of the Pirates add-on coincides with the launch of Amazon UK’s rival to iTunes, which goes by the highly original name, Amazon mp3. The new Amazon service means Brits can buy albums that cost around 7-10 pounds (about $10-15) on iTunes for just 3 pounds (less than $5) on Amazon mp3. But, of course there are a whole lot more digital products on Amazon than music, there are movies, games, for instance.

Pirates of the Amazon started out as a parody, supposedly. Students in media research and education on the Media Design M.A. course at the Piet Zwart Institute of the Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam, in The Netherlands, wrote the add-on as “a practical experiment on interface design, information access and currently debated issues in media culture.” They claim to have been surprised by the attention their invention received and the strong reactions to the project, not least the legal takedown notice issued by Amazon within days of the release of the add-on.

The add-on itself could have been a major disruptor by providing a simple interface for amazon users to torrent versions of products for which they may have been searching. It provided nothing new, torrent search exists and torrent software and networks are already widely available, but by interfacing the search with Amazon it removed a step for n00b or lazy would-be file sharers.

Of course, anyone hoping to check out the “parody” for educational purposes or just a good laugh can no longer find it on the original site. Thankfully, those kind folk at torrentfreak have a backup of the Firefox add-on here (right-click, save, and install to Firefox, or click and open to install. Unfortunately, it looks like amazon is somehow blocking the “download4free” links and graphics, so the pirate skin no longer works. It’s what you’d expect really though, isn’t it?

Personally, I’d be very wary of installing an add-on of this sort without investigating its inner workings first, and especially given that it has no truly legitimate use, it could so very easily contain malicious code, and who’d be laughing then?