Firefox Pirates Take Over Amazon

Written by Ernesto on December 03, 2008 

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, is under attack by online pirates. An add-on for the Firefox browser called ‘Pirates of the Amazon’ makes it possible to shop at the Amazon store but leave without paying a dime. Instead, on Amazon product pages the add-on integrates links to ‘free’ copies on The Pirate Bay.

pirates of the amazonThe timing of the ‘Pirates of the Amazon‘ launch could not have been more (un)fortunate. At the busiest time of the year for on- and offline retailers, this Firefox browser add-on offers users a download link to pirated copies of products that can normally be found in the Amazon online store.

When the add-on is installed, it integrates a new “download 4 free” button into the Amazon product page when the same article is also available via The Pirate Bay. It works for CDs, DVDs, games, books and basically all products that can be converted to a digital format.

With their mashup of the largest online retailer and the largest BitTorrent tracker, the project aims to “be a counterpart to the current models of media distribution”, and to “redistribute the wealth”.

The people behind the project have chosen to link to The Pirate Bay, but clearly state that they act independently. “We are not affiliated with The Pirate Bay, and do not host or even link to any illegal content,” they write. “This artistic project addresses the topic of current media distribution models vs. current culture and technical possibilities.”

‘Pirates of the Amazon’ is not the only pirate add-on for Firefox, in fact there are quite a few. IMDB, Last.fm, and Rotten Tomatoes all have their own pirate skin available. Most of them use the Greasemonkey add-on which allows the installation of all kinds of useful user scripts which customize the web to your pirate needs.

Update: The site seems to be offline, here is a backup of the xpi file (piratesoftheamazon.xpi) for the add-on. In Firefox > file > open file > select the xpi file.
The Amazon Store with Pirated Alternative

pirates of the amazon

Previously: Obama Embraces Creative Commons

Next: Movie Industry: London ‘Fake-Free Zone’ by 2012

148 Responses

1 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:19 by www.eZee.se

HEHHEHE TPB…. FTW?

2 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:23 by www.eZee.se

Oops, the above submitted before i wrote the rest of my comment, so mods if you want feel free to merge the above with this comment.

It really is crazy, how in the world can the antiP2P and governments hope to stop this when there are sooo many realllly brainy folk coming up with new ideas all the time and cracking the silly ideas the MAFIAA come up with at the same time.

Those silly antiP2P slobs are going to be playing catch up forever, the writings clearly visible on the wall… how f*cking blind do you have to be to not see it?

3 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:24 by Oldmankdude

Lol SWEET

4 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:24 by Anonymous

Awesome.

5 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:26 by Jack

Heh, now that is funny stuff. However, I can smell a law suit coming post haste.

http://www.fetchmp3.com (off to futz with the firefox api lol..)

J.

6 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:27 by Anonymous

Jyeah.

7 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:28 by ...

fuckin stupid especially with the amazing price cuts amazon gives its customers, don’t get me wrong i’m a huge bittorrent fan not to mention i pirate just about everything i possibly can, but stupid shit like this is what causes amazon to jack the prices right back up to retail… this is the one time i can honestly say, fuck you

8 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:30 by Anonymous

Gonna get that addon right now.

9 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:35 by www.eZee.se

Anybody able to get that add on? site seems to be down :(

10 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:43 by Anonymous

Well done!!

11 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:52 by MeH

This is stupid people should learn how to do it or just find someone who does who would teach them… This is stupid!!! And is a reason as stated in post 7 that online/retail shops put their prices up every so often!!! its a nightmare!!! and its just a vicious circle meaning people just pirate more and more because they cannot afford the stuff!

MeH
Mayhem excites Hell

12 Dec 03, 2008 at 00:53 by Bob

I’ve gotta agree with #7 here. I’m all for pirating where I can, but Amazon.com is one of the good ones. Why not pull this kinda crap with a DRM site or something? This is one move I don’t agree with.

13 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:00 by Charax

Site’s down, but you can download from the Google Cache: http://preview.tinyurl.com/6j8y5w

14 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:10 by r0ck

While I find this an extremely cool and very in-your-face-ish idea I also believe that this will cause some trouble. Now that the direct connection of these two “worlds” has been made someone will want to stop this at all cost (if only Amazon). And to be honest if there’s something more dangerous than pissing on the studios … it’s pissing on their retail pimp.

Things will get worse … not that I care but I’m just mentioning it before everybody acts surprised :p

15 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:21 by Fusen

the title of the article is COMPLETELY misleading.

You clearly write as if the addon somehow downloads the content from the amazon servers without having to pay.

Where as this is merely just searching for a torrent with the same name as the page you are on then offers it to you. There’s no guarantee of quality or if it will be available to download.

This is hardly news.

16 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:25 by Joshua

Awesome… now if only I used FireFox (although when I did, I just had TPB toolbar for it instead).

Creative thinking though… +1

17 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:30 by muahaha

Shop for Spore then maybes? :D

18 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:30 by greylion

About the example: I downloaded that soundtrack months ago from TPB.
If it’s the same one, it’s botched; as it was ripped from CD, I think the program ‘normalized’ the sound level wrongly and the bass got clipped in many places. Sounds horrible.
Especially “Bootstrap’s bootstraps” makes me cringe.

19 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:42 by Anon

Anyone that is familiar with Firefox add-ons is going to be familiar with torrents. Shockingly uninteresting.

20 Dec 03, 2008 at 01:49 by EdginHedge

Ah crap, that was anticlimactic!

Surely, shopping without paying (that would include getting your stuff actually posted to you) is out of question, but I was hoping for some sort of shopping cart spam, showering the bots with phantom requests or something… just to piss them off for not giving away stuff for free…

21 Dec 03, 2008 at 02:09 by 21

I admit I torrent a lot. but I also shop amazon often for their low prices, I will not be using this add on because I strongly support amazon. In fact I just bought 3 albums off amazon for 7$ a piece.

22 Dec 03, 2008 at 02:10 by 21

oh, and I agree with #7

23 Dec 03, 2008 at 02:14 by Ian H

What fool would trust an add-on written by anonymous pirates. What ELSE is it doing I wonder.

24 Dec 03, 2008 at 02:14 by trinsic

Well I think this would be cool if a product was out of print or something to that effect where you couldnt buy it online. I think we should try pay for things if we can offord them. right now I cant so this could be a cool thing for me.

25 Dec 03, 2008 at 02:33 by Ghost

Any chance of this thing coming to use Opera users? I know the addon/widget systems are different…hmmm…would love to see it.

26 Dec 03, 2008 at 02:57 by Anonymous

Do you actually know that there’s more than Amazon? These kind of quasi-monopolies (Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Google, Microsoft, etc.) are never good. For example, import items are usually excessively expensive at Amazon. Most of the time Amazon may be the cheapest. Buy why? Because they have become one of the biggest, so they can counter-balance discounts with overpriced products. Everytime you buy from Amazon, a smaller shop goes bankrupt. If you pump all your money into the USA, don’t be surprised if your local economy gets screwed. In the end, you’ll have to pay the bill anyway.

That doesn’t mean Amazon is evil. It just means mega businesses are bad regardless of how they act. Capitalism without strong competition in each market isn’t healthy.

27 Dec 03, 2008 at 03:18 by zarathustra

Obviously a ‘very bad idea’, for innumerable reasons.

All of you fanboiz wailing “where can I downloadz teh plugin” ought to stop & think of the consequences before you act…

28 Dec 03, 2008 at 03:33 by Martin

This extension sucks.

I looked for “Bella” a relatively new movie and it automatically downladed “La Vita e Bella” …

On top of that, the “Download 4 Free” mirror-effect banner is too blink-blink for me…

THERE WAS a firefox extension I used to use that showed you MININOVA results when you were browsing IMDB movies. It had a >> button in case the first result didn’t match with what you wanted.

When I upgraded firefox it stopped working, and I never heard of it again. Now I’m trying to find it but can’t. I think it was based on a neat Greasemonkey script, but transfered into a ’standalone’ add-on.

If someone finds it, share :D

29 Dec 03, 2008 at 03:48 by Anonymous

@19: yep… sigh

30 Dec 03, 2008 at 04:15 by sunghak

I have got good news for you
Im a gdi 10$ business man are you interested in internet marketing business?

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t… you are right.”

I hope that we’ll have a successful business venture together

http://freedom.ws/cshak25

31 Dec 03, 2008 at 04:29 by Sean

Someone needs to put all the best torrent scripts (for greasemonkey) together and package them as a Firefox extension (like Lifehacker’s BetterGmail).

32 Dec 03, 2008 at 04:51 by Lucifer.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I do not like this add-on. I am a bit-torrent fan but Amazon is a great business.

This add-on is wrong.

33 Dec 03, 2008 at 05:02 by Jacob

Hurray, It appears that Amazon has been liberated. Oh amazon has been having troubles recently hasn’t it? Lol it has a big problem here though as they can not start ip banning as those people are their customer and amy not be the only user from that I.P adress. They might not buy digital content but they may by physical content of amazon. However they can not. not ban their I.P addresses as company’s such as the “RIAA” and the “MPAA” are/ or might go insane over this and demand amazon to censor those links.

34 Dec 03, 2008 at 05:58 by UNKNOWN

Stupid and irresponsible.

35 Dec 03, 2008 at 06:06 by The Ripper

There’s a difference between pirating music, tv, etc. and being assholes. Sure what these guys are doing is hilarious, but it’s fuckin stupid. I just hope none of the ‘innocent’ pirates gets shit for their stupidity.

Long Live OiNK

36 Dec 03, 2008 at 06:18 by Grok

lulzy

I support this.

37 Dec 03, 2008 at 06:24 by Geoffrey M

Meh, pretty ridiculous. I’m all for a better content distribution system, but Amazon is one of the good guys in my book.

38 Dec 03, 2008 at 06:24 by yeah

Amazon rocks, these guys are total noob faggots.

F*ck off losers, we dont need you picking fights with innocents. Go f*ck up the MPAA or something dipshits.

39 Dec 03, 2008 at 07:14 by Anonymous

yeah, that’s not theft at all…

40 Dec 03, 2008 at 07:15 by pathetic

this is pathetic. do you really need a huge graphic on everything you look at to remind you “hey you can probably get this for free on bit torrent…”?

41 Dec 03, 2008 at 07:37 by UraPhake

I think some of you have gone overboard here in your responses to this add-on.

Get a sense of humor and then look at this add-on again with that in mind.

Anyone who wants “stuff for free” is not going to use this thing. They already know what they want and will simply bypass Amazon and search directly for a torrent.

Now, if they can come up with an add-on that works on a site like Newegg and the stuff gets shipped to me at no cost, then that would be bad for Newegg.

This add-on isn’t going to effect Amazon in the least.

It’s funny as hell — I’ll give it that much.

42 Dec 03, 2008 at 07:58 by Daddy

Do you really think this is going to hurt Amazon?

1. It’s a lame christmas present to give some something that’s been burned instead of bought.

2. People who are savvy to p2p don’t really need this (clever as hell though)

3. People who aren’t p2p savvy probably won’t know this extension exists let alone know how to go through the process of downloading with torrents.

This isn’t going to hurt anything.

43 Dec 03, 2008 at 08:04 by Zwartbaard

Supertoll! A must have.

44 Dec 03, 2008 at 08:07 by 050284

it’s nice to use utorrent after all! you dont know what files especially in movies files maybe there something wrong with that! thank you all!

45 Dec 03, 2008 at 09:13 by Ari

Sigh… This is a great thing… grow up Newfags!

46 Dec 03, 2008 at 09:20 by Anonymous

yeah i agree , im all up for a change in bussiness model to make downloading legal but this just seems a bit too much . though it is a intresting idea , maybe they should adopt something like this to give away sample tracks or the such

47 Dec 03, 2008 at 09:49 by Mr Antalope

Anyone got one of these for my bank :-)

Seriously, I would change the wording from “Download 4 Free” to “Try Before You Buy” for obvious reasons.

48 Dec 03, 2008 at 11:39 by pZ

TPB cant get more in-ur-face :D good job…

49 Dec 03, 2008 at 12:36 by Baloo2

Many trolls here today. Paid by the four letter corporations I guess.

For Chrissy’s sake, haven’t you trolls realized yet, that the file sharing community is also the greatest consumer of CDs and DVDs?

This plug-in is a great tool to give you the opportunity to Try Before You Buy, just like Antalope said. A service usually not available to disk buyers, but almost always in every other branch.

50 Dec 03, 2008 at 13:09 by worked for me

the site is back up now

51 Dec 03, 2008 at 13:19 by Anonymous

u dumb ASSES… all the plugin does is lead you to a torrent file. if a torrent file does not exists, then you cannot download it. This has nothing to do with Amazon. It’s like a torrent search engine but gives you a nice shiny button when you load a page with content that could be pirated.

52 Dec 03, 2008 at 13:59 by tb

nicely done spread the wealth around lol

53 Dec 03, 2008 at 14:10 by reacto

it dosent really do much else cept search on piratebay and load a graphic from pirates of the amazon..i know this by running a http sniffer when i reloaded a amazon page..it seems safe

54 Dec 03, 2008 at 14:19 by derik

this just mean. just morally wrong. im ashamed of being a bittorrent:er, i use bittorrent to try games and then buy them, but the point of this is to not buy anything, to put amazon.com out of buisness.

55 Dec 03, 2008 at 14:39 by h33t

in our minds we know the difference between a DVD from Amazon and a rip from TPB. we do both, we buy DVDs and we download rips

but in the minds of Amazon there is no difference. they think like Ernesto says that people can get the DVD for free from TPB

that is the big propaganda against filesharing, the anti-p2p equate illegal downloads with retail products. here we have torrentfreak supporting the anti-p2p by reporting that what is available on Amazon is available for free on TPB when clearly it is not so

a sensational article that is alarmingly wrong in message and content

56 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:16 by Baloo2

@h33t:

Don’t you ever underestimate the filesharing/-caring community like that again, you hear!

We know perfectly well the difference between more or less lousy ripped disks and The Real Thing. And most of us pay hundreds, if not thousands, of Euro each year proving it — and still we are dragged to court, in the thousands, accused of theft.

This service is NOT the alternative to buying the stuff, it’s a way to force upon the greedy disk peddlers the normal consumer right to Try Before Buy.

57 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:28 by theos

Don’t like this a bit. If because of nothing else, than cause it is gonna hurt Amazon only … It should at least be more “democratic”

58 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:35 by Roze

How is it stupid? Don’t you know that Amazon uses DRM? Besides, they are most definitely supporters of the industry.

Or, even if they weren’t, TPB is definitely a great thing – a positive thing.

Roze
http://www.10ch.org/

59 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:39 by linda

I’m an open minded girl from US, I’m interested in exotic things, photography, outdoors and sports…I have my photos on — Tallhub.com —, I love tall guys!
Do you love travelling and have some experience? Just find me out!!!

60 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:42 by Alex

http://64.233.183.132/search?q=cache:oAJnYcpYxkAJ:pirates-of-the-amazon.com/+pirates+of+the+amazon&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

61 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:47 by Kevin

Actually, I was kinda agreeing with number 7 till I noticed how miss leading this is. We get stuff from piratebay anyway, so why not just use this to help you search piratebay a little better.

62 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:49 by Anonymous

this seems like the exact type of thing that would be used by **AA to show that the reason they arent making big bux is piracy.

63 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:51 by Anon2

#15 – This is news. Your incorrect interpretation of the title is your own problem.

Although it seems a shame to target Amazon considering its so cheap there, and id deffinately shop there over anywhere else;
Its a boost for torrenting, and makes switching from browsing Amazon listmanias’ to searching for the torrents much less hassle.

64 Dec 03, 2008 at 16:56 by Roger

Support your artists and support amazon. Don’t steal.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Ffeature.html%3Fie%3DUTF8%26ref%255F%3Damb%255Flink%255F7868332%255F1%26docId%3D1000215141&tag=christianande-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

65 Dec 03, 2008 at 17:04 by Simon

Should I just mention Hitler at this junction and save us all some time?

66 Dec 03, 2008 at 17:06 by Simon

*juncture* :)

67 Dec 03, 2008 at 17:18 by Meocross

The War Has Been Won.
They cant beat this!?!?
THIS IS THE RESOLUTION.

68 Dec 03, 2008 at 17:25 by aaaaaaaaa

TPB FTW

69 Dec 03, 2008 at 17:38 by Roze

@67
How is not giving money to Amazon “stealing”?

Roze

70 Dec 03, 2008 at 17:44 by Baloo2

@Roze:

In their book, everything that reduces their ever increasing profit is “stealing”.

So be careful whenever you feel like boycotting certain companies — their reduced profit growth always means that you are stealing from them.

The Pyramid must always grow, or else the top might crumble when the base is weakening!

71 Dec 03, 2008 at 18:08 by Undispu7ed

Ok you guys are fking idiots. This addon directly links you to a file that is already up on TPB. It is in NO way, shape, or form, stealing from Amazon, whatsoever!

72 Dec 03, 2008 at 18:16 by Albert

This marks the beginning of the Online Pirate Empire

73 Dec 03, 2008 at 18:25 by Anonymous

Anon pirates? Hmmmm, someone should check this addons out and see if it wasnt something made by the MPAA or the RIAA to see effectively how many sales someone would actually lose….

74 Dec 03, 2008 at 18:30 by Rawr

Am I the only one who thinks TPB is a horrible tracker? Whenever I search for something I always end up with completely unrelated results, I prefer btjunkie.org, it has all TPB links and more.

75 Dec 03, 2008 at 20:41 by what

This is too high profile. If we want pirate bay to stay. Take this crap down. We can use the bays search engine

76 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:06 by poop

yeah so … face

77 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:10 by Daniel

Oh! I have actually met Jeff Bezos (Founder of Amazon.com) on several occasions (Pr Events etc) and he is SHITTING BRICKS right now i Promise!!

78 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:15 by Eric

Download iPhone 4 Free! Sweet!

79 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:20 by xxx

You can still download it here:

http://cavallette.autistici.org/

80 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:31 by Sun5

Sounds great,but not a very clever idea at the end of the day.
This app.is not needed for most people to find what they want and how they want it,why make enemys of Amazon!

81 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:39 by noname

it´s funny

82 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:42 by vishna

is it open source?

83 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:44 by meme

http://cavallette.autistici.org/wp-content/uploads/piratesoftheamazon.xpi

84 Dec 03, 2008 at 21:53 by kind of gay

yeah thats right this sucks just because you use TPB dont mean your a pirate you get crap speeds and i feel sooooo sorry fo the ppl who use TPB normal XVID downloads suck its all about the proper 108p blu rays now :P then the UHD for the people who have a proper internet connection like 100mbit :) and connect to other 100mbit users.

85 Dec 03, 2008 at 22:06 by thatedeguy

down now. nothing but a 403 to remember it by.

86 Dec 03, 2008 at 22:15 by Anonymous

found a copy to download

http://cavallette.autistici.org/wp-content/uploads/piratesoftheamazon.xpi

the site is in french or something tho

87 Dec 03, 2008 at 22:17 by mRziPPy

Site down and tiny cache :-(
And Tiny cache not linking to cached file…
Me thinks dirty tricks are shutting down site!

88 Dec 03, 2008 at 22:24 by Jack Beaner

Wow dude, that is pretty cool. Sounds like a great group of hackers to me!

jess
http://www.anonymity.at.tc

89 Dec 03, 2008 at 22:48 by Pig

Totally agree with #7. Most importantly I agree with #23, I hope it’s a trojan on a timer.

90 Dec 03, 2008 at 23:19 by Anonymous

We need one for IMDB as well!
That shows seeds/peers too..

91 Dec 03, 2008 at 23:24 by keygen

If anybody has doubts about “what this addon is doing”, just download the file, unzip it and look at the code.

All Firefox Addons are just a buch of zipped Javascript files.

92 Dec 03, 2008 at 23:25 by concerned pirateer

amazing.

93 Dec 03, 2008 at 23:39 by NastyBedazzler

I think it’s shit like this (however creative) that is going to bring piracy front and center and bring down the Pirate Bay. If they would operate silently, keep their mouths shut and stop bringing so much attention onto themselves certainly they’ll be much better off in the long run. If they create a spectacle and keep poking folks the wrong way eventually someone powerful is going to want to make an example out of them, much like they did to Oink.

As stated in the article this (apparently) bears no association to the Pirate Bay, but my statement still stands. Unnecessary stunts like this are what’s going to make copyright laws stricter and bring about more hostile Tracker takeovers by the RIAA, MPAA, etc.

94 Dec 04, 2008 at 00:10 by Robert Nelson

Why didn’t they target the Itunes store instead? Amazon is a good guy and it pains me to see this sort of BS

95 Dec 04, 2008 at 00:34 by concerned

I wish people would stop making pirating so damn easy. We really need to find way to keep it further under the radar.

People seem to download shit just because it’s there.

96 Dec 04, 2008 at 00:50 by rsjeps.ukah

very witty. i might send it as a holiday greeting card to friends and family ;)

and about low profile things, we should start considering that kind of attitude and finally take over the mainstream. this *is* the future way of media distribution, and there is no reversing the technological process. i say we start teaching kids in elementary schools how to p2p instead of fighting it.

97 Dec 04, 2008 at 01:11 by brian

I am not so sure about this #1 if its real like shopping for free feds could be tracking this down since amazon is a company and #2 how the hell are are you going to get a digital format (A container format is a computer file format that can contain various types of data) that is just digital data NOT SOLID, NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN TOUCH, or SEE, ETC. from a new not opened CD or DVD that is in a warehouse to your PC unless it was magically transferred over the air to your PC. or if Amazon has a mp3 download link to that music CD you want and the firefox add on blocks you from paying BUT (for example) in Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection they have no digital file download in Amazon and you could download it in the firefox add on like in: http://www.vimeo.com/2380513 the only way to get a digital file from a dvd or cd is to rip it and then use a crack file or keygen to activate it which you can normally download in pirate bay

98 Dec 04, 2008 at 01:23 by Anonymous

file now also appears to be here:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4552358/

99 Dec 04, 2008 at 01:30 by DIOS

Excelente

100 Dec 04, 2008 at 01:40 by stranj

great. like the piratebay need another reason for the man to shut them down. what dickwads.

101 Dec 04, 2008 at 01:47 by Roze

@83 by what, @104 NastyBedazzler, @111 stranj
I don’t see how The Pirate Bay is going down any time soon. Don’t forget that the owners are in Sweden, which is not the United States.

Roze

102 Dec 04, 2008 at 01:59 by Sal Mangano

i never understood the idea of stealing something digital as being more nobel than breaking into someone’s house and taking their TV. A pirate is a common theif, plain and simple.

103 Dec 04, 2008 at 02:35 by UraPhake

Dec 03, 2008 at 21:10 by Daniel
Oh! I have actually met Jeff Bezos (Founder of Amazon.com) on several occasions (Pr Events etc) and he is SHITTING BRICKS right now i Promise
=-=-=-=-=

Yes, he’s shitting gold bricks.

And for those folks here who cannot seem to read — The Pirate Bay has nothing to do with this add-on.
—–
Dec 04, 2008 at 01:59 by Sal Mangano
i never understood the idea of stealing something digital as being more nobel than breaking into someone’s house and taking their TV. A pirate is a common theif, plain and simple.
=-=-=-=-=

File-sharing is not stealing. If you want your analogy to work, then it should say, “…breaking into someone’s house and making an identical copy of their TV and then leaving the original behind when they leave.”

But you don’t seem to have all the cards in your deck, so you can’t understand it.

104 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:11 by Roze

@113
You seem to confuse file-sharing with stealing. There are not the same thing. File-sharing is copying one’s private possession and giving it to someone else. It is one’s right to do whatever one wishes with one’s private property – and that includes copying it and giving it to someone else. There is nothing wrong with that.

Also, in file-sharing, nobody is “breaking in” to anything. When one downloads from The Pirate Bay, in no way are you breaking into the peers’/seeds’ computers. The peers and seeds which are uploading the files to you are willingly doing so. I don’t see how, when the peers/seeds are completely willing to send you the file, how you are stealing when you download from the seeds/peers.

Roze

105 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:20 by Robb Topolski

a few notes of my own, from http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21523205-My-preachy-rant-and-then-some-technical-worries

#1. If it’s being sold on Amazon, don’t just take it for free. I support P2P, but not taking wrongful advantage of it.

#2. The plugin “phones home” unnecessarily. It could be made more private.

#3. The plugin also gives a special “Pirates-of-the-Amazon” hello in its User-Agent when it talks to TPB.

#4. I didn’t see anything else suspicious going on inside the code. (What I found wasn’t very suspicious, just concerning for privacy-minded users.)

Click the link above for the long version. I hope people use this plugin responsibly.

106 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:28 by Sal Mangano

@115

You seem to confuse possession with ownership. If I buy a CD I don’t own the music and have no right to give it to you.

107 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:32 by djnforce9

I tried it out for a bit. I think the authors should have less of a dependency on their server for this plugin. I’m not sure if the search is done locally or remotely but the images load off of their server with each usage which will certainly hog bandwidth and resources quickly (and so it’s no wonder their site is so slow or sometimes down). The images should be bundled in the plugin itself in my opinion.

108 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:40 by Roze

@117
Why not? It is private property. What copyright does is that it takes away people’s 5th amendment right to private property. It is true – possession is not ownership. Sometimes, it is a loan. However, many times, possession is ownership. When one buys a CD, the one owns it. One owns the music as well. Same as buying a car. When one buys a car, one owns the car. One one buys a screwdriver, one owns a screwdriver. One may not own the copyright to the CD, but one still owns the CD. What the right to copyright does is that it merely socia-listically takes away everyone’s right to do whatever they want with their private property – and concentrates it into a central authority. It makes no sense whatsoever to say that people can’t make a screwdriver modeled off of one that they own and give it to someone else.

You seem to confuse ownership with the ownership of a government mandate to take away other people’s rights. Other people have made the same mistake before you. For example, in the slavery days, people have thought that slavery was some kind of “ownership,” and that just because people “possessed” themselves, didn’t mean that they “owned” themselves, so that they could potentially be “owned” by someone else. Those kind of people were slaves. These “owners” confused “ownership” with “ownership of a government mandate to take away other’s rights.” Luckily, things were cleared up over time, but not without a struggle. Same for copyright.

Roze

109 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:44 by TAKE CONTROL

Hey I found a Link download it before it.(Copy and paste)

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4552358/Pirates_of_the_Amazon_firefox_add-on

110 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:45 by niceidea

I can’t buy things from amazon due to boycotting because of the one click patent, but with this firefox add on, I can finally make use of their website. Nice going!

111 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:47 by OMG

Perfect timing when the people are losing money and have no jobs.This is too tempting! Who wouldn’t take advantage.

112 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:57 by poor person

http://www.vimeo.com/2380513
NAW not 4 me

(Ass to LIMEWIRE)LOL

113 Dec 04, 2008 at 03:58 by poor person

http://www.vimeo.com/2380513
NAW not 4 me

(Add to LIMEWIRE)LOL

114 Dec 04, 2008 at 04:22 by speedwyze

I slightly disagree with No. 7…if Amazon jacks the prices then the add-on becomes more valuable…Conversely I believe the prices would be slightly lowered to make it even more enticing to purchase rather than steal.

115 Dec 04, 2008 at 04:25 by zero-kill

too bad you can’t download an ipod.

maybe in the future?

116 Dec 04, 2008 at 04:40 by ntopics

I guess if folks can get products
for free that’s what they choose.
These are illegal copies?

thanks from tony at:
http://www.ntopics.com

117 Dec 04, 2008 at 06:22 by adam

FAIL.

118 Dec 04, 2008 at 15:22 by Anonymous

“pirate just about everything i possibly can, but stupid shit like this is what causes Amazon to jack the prices right back up to retail…”

That’s one of the most fantastic arguments I’ve ever heard. Your basically saying “I steal stuff but the way I steal stuff is FAR more honest than what these people are doing”

Face it mate, if you choose to pirate things you can’t play the moral high ground on this. Be happy that you get stuff for free and leave the sanctimonious rants to one side.

119 Dec 04, 2008 at 15:40 by dragon six

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. So what if it is a huge corp? What happens when a big company loses money? The average consumer and working guy suffers.

120 Dec 04, 2008 at 16:37 by Roze

@137 dragon six
Wrong. Some companies (like the RIAA and MPAA members) are just imbeciles and should lose money. That is what boycotting is about. They are doing wrong things, and one should just not endorse them. People boycott things – and good things can result.

Roze

121 Dec 04, 2008 at 16:52 by ojojoip

Great, gives me a .dmg file for a windows app download.

122 Dec 04, 2008 at 17:25 by Josh

The game/movie/music/software industries have to realize that their products aren’t worth any thing any more. The only thing that makes something valuable is scarcity. With the internet age came the end to the scarcity of data which is all software, movies and music is. They are so abundant and easy to acquire that they are literally not worth any money at all. The price is artificially created. People just expect it to cost a certain amount. The problem is now every one knows the can just download a free copy and so they know that they are being sold something that is actually worthless. All this DRM nonsense is just to prolong the inevitable death of the pay for content model that they use now.

123 Dec 04, 2008 at 19:22 by MPJ

This is why old-school PAPER books rule

124 Dec 04, 2008 at 19:57 by geek_2k

coooooooolllll

http://www.hidden-geek.blogspot.com

125 Dec 04, 2008 at 20:22 by me

I just tried and you don’t actually download anything from Amazon it will only use the amazon item description to check if the file is available in Torrent if so you will see “download for free” if not it will say ” not available”. Once you have the file and make it run you will see

126 Dec 04, 2008 at 20:40 by |-|3|\|RY

yeah, people(this article included) think that this is somehow stealing from amazon, when it realy isnt at all, it just searches the web for a torrent with the same time/file typ as the amazon item

127 Dec 04, 2008 at 21:13 by Blackhole

http://www.colasiteoflife.com/leech/PiratesOfTheAmazon.xpi

Direct link :)

128 Dec 04, 2008 at 21:21 by Jim

“Redistribute the wealth”? Where have I heard that before?

129 Dec 04, 2008 at 21:40 by rfyh

lol

130 Dec 05, 2008 at 00:22 by Christopher

Guys, who says that they are not going to expand this to OTHER sites in the future: Ebay, MSN, etc.

Amazon might just be the ‘first on the hit parade’ as they say.

131 Dec 05, 2008 at 01:41 by Anonymous

i agree they should redirect towards DRM

132 Dec 05, 2008 at 01:49 by earthrat

I agree with 23. Ian its the same dumb asses that will download a pirated copy of a anti spyware program or anti virus program. You want to protect your system from scum! The same scum that offers you free software to protect your self. Can you see the Irony?

133 Dec 05, 2008 at 03:16 by Anonymous

“I agree with 23. Ian its the same dumb asses that will download a pirated copy of a anti spyware program or anti virus program. You want to protect your system from scum! The same scum that offers you free software to protect your self. Can you see the Irony?”

The kind of dumbasses that download pirated anti-malware programs to protect their system from scum…

The kind of scum that offers freeware anti-malware programs?

Uh huh. Yeah. That isn’t irony. That’s drug-fueled rambling.

134 Dec 05, 2008 at 12:35 by italki

I think the add-on has stopped working. Its only a hundred lines of code, nothing malicious in there…

I dont get the Download 4 Free button any more..

135 Dec 05, 2008 at 17:13 by Anonymous

Work great!

136 Dec 05, 2008 at 22:18 by keygen

It is so funny how many people still thought The Pirate Bay was some underground thing that has to be kept secret.

In fact, TPB is responsible for most of the internet traffic for the whole country of Sweden … and they just have trackers running and offer some torrent-files.

TPB is already turning the world upside down, it already IS mainstream. This Addon is awesome stuff because it just makes apparent what almost everybody knows, it breaks the taboo. But it will not “harm” amazon any more than TPB already does.

137 Dec 06, 2008 at 07:23 by anon

I only downloaded this because of the take-down request. Because of the request, I’m now gonna send it to everybody I know.

138 Dec 06, 2008 at 19:31 by Psion

Im all for torrent, free DL etc. But i have to agree with #7.

Amazon is one of the good ones and this sort of thing does nothing to help the situation. I torrent because i dont want to pay £15 for a DVD that cost pence to make just to get a load of extras i will never watch. But if i can buy it of amazon for a few of quid, i will.

With all the hassle that torrent is getting at the moment this is probaly not the time to be trying to “stick it to the man”.

Write on that does this with Itunes, WB store, Sony music etc. and i might agree ;)

139 Dec 06, 2008 at 21:55 by lily

so good, do visit my site http://www.mylinkshop.co.nr

140 Dec 08, 2008 at 02:05 by AngryMan

Why do people feel the need to do this? Somebody, somewhere is having money that they earned taken out of their pockets because of this. And I’m not talking about executives, actors, rock stars or “fatcat” businessmen – I’m talking the guys who man the sound booths, hold the cameras and animate the 3d models.

There’s no such thing as a free download – it always comes at the expense of lost custom.

141 Dec 08, 2008 at 06:28 by Harold B

This is definitely not OK. Remember you receive back from the Universe just as much as you give. The less you give the poorer you will become. Honest hard working artists and performers deserve to be paid fairly for their efforts. Before you rip someone off ask yourself how would you feel if somebody did this to you.

142 Dec 08, 2008 at 10:03 by Enrico

this is fucking stupid and the add-on is just few script that any newbie can write (ANY! Even non tecchie one, after readong few javascript pages).

The reason why nobody wrote that till now is maybe because nobody wants to destroy the market as these idiots are trying to do.

I often BUY things at Amazon, because if somebody does a good job I want to PAY him for his work. I don’t steal his job! When I publish my stuff, I get sick of people that download it illegally because they can’t afford few dollars that let me pay rent and publish other stuff.

If you like something, then buy it. Otherwise you won’t get any second version.

And if you don’t buy it and you will get a second version, this is because some honest guy in the world paid double price for you, asshole!

143 Dec 08, 2008 at 10:32 by jimjim

Take what ye can me hearties and give nothing back yeeeeeharrrrrr

Just yea be sure this isnt a music and film industry joint effort to catch yea out and serve up a law suit to make yea pay for second rate quality films and music!!!

144 Dec 08, 2008 at 12:54 by joe

only the RIAA would write such a ridiculous piece of software.

145 Dec 08, 2008 at 17:15 by benny

quite useless article, since you did write things we dont need and didnt write those we need, e.g.:

The site was taken down, if you dont know yet:

“One day after publishing we received a take down request by the legal department of Amazon.com”

146 Dec 13, 2008 at 07:17 by Zoe

Since most writers can’t make a living writing (even most new york published authors) seriously consider what your theft is doing to people.

You aren’t robin hood, redistributing wealth. You aren’t taking from the rich and giving to the poor. You’re taking from already struggling writers, and insisting that they work as slaves.

We deserve better.

147 Dec 28, 2008 at 09:54 by Hyper

This plugin led to a crazy webhype!

148 Dec 31, 2008 at 07:09 by Internet

Fusen is right. This add-on does not take from Amazon.com but from Pirate Bay. All this thing does is allow you to pretty much search for the item [the torrent] with Amazon instead of Pirate Bay.
So in other words, Amazon loses nothing from this! So come on! All you people who use a torrent to get certain things are doing the same thing as the people who are using this add-on. So just please be quiet about how this is wrong but torrenting is right. THEY ARE THE SAME THING!

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