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funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

4 edits

3 recommendations

funchords

MVM

My preachy rant and then some technical worries --

Not so great.

I tried it, it works (I guess). It links to the Torrent's page on The Pirate Bay.

So here's my take:

#1 - If it's being sold on Amazon, don't just take it for free. Support the art that you love. I'm interested in hearing the moral justification for taking titles like Wall-E (the title I tested, and yes, it found a Torrent for it). For me, if it's on Amazon.com and I want it, I'm likely to buy it. If it's not for sale new or used anywhere, but someone on P2P has it, then I can possibly see the justification. Different people will draw that line in different places, but there's just no good reason to take a first-run product that is for sale (and cheaply) and because you can. I generally support P2P and file-sharing, and I think copyright laws have expanded beyond sensibility, but I can't support taking full advantage of this plugin -- I hope people will do what's right.

#2 - It "phones home" very unnecessarily. The script piratesoftheamazon.js fetches its images from its home site, which basically lets it know (via HTTP's REFERER tag) what page you were on within Amazon when it fetched its image. This function was not hidden in any way, so the developers may not have evil intent, but users should be aware that when they visit a product's page on Amazon, they're also sharing that info with whoever owns www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com.

Name Server:ns3.firstfind.nl
Name Server:ns4.firstfind.nl
Created On:2008-10-21
Last Updated On:2008-10-21
Expiration Date:2009-10-21
Dealer:yourhosting
Registrant ID:timoklok99@hotmail.com
Registrant Name:T.F.N. Klok
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street1:H.modedstraat 26b
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Utrecht
Registrant State/Province:
Registrant Postal Code:3553 VL
Registrant Country:NL
Registrant Phone:+31.642082408
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Email:timoklok99@hotmail.com
 

var not_downloadable_image = "http://www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com/pics/not_downloadable.gif";
var not_available_image = "http://www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com/pics/not_available.gif";
var download_now_image = "http://www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com/pics/download.gif";
var loading_gif = "http://www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com/pics/loading.gif";
 

3. It also gives a special "Pirates-of-the-Amazon" hello in its User-Agent when it searches thepiratebay.org (which doesn't necessarily implicate TPB in this, it could be just a cute thing to do). So TPB knows what traffic is being generated by this plugin.

var newlink = 'http://'+ URLname +'/s/?q=\"' + myTextField2 + "\"&" + torrent_cat + "=on&searchTitle=on&page=0&orderby=7";
// Go fetch the source code of the torrent search page
GM_xmlhttpRequest(
{
method:"GET",
url: newlink,
headers:
{
    "User-Agent":"Pirates-of-the-Amazon",
        //"Operating Ship": "HMS Bounty",
    //"User-Agent":"Mozilla/5.0",  
"Accept":"text/xml"
},
 

4. I didn't see anything else going on inside the code. While not directly evil, these things that I did find are things users ought to know. Technical worries aside, users ought to ask themselves what the right thing to do is -- how will they, personally, financially support the art that they value?



Found more:
Pirates of the Amazon | Artzilla.org

* To: infoo {AT} moddr.net
* Subject: [Nettime-nl] Pirates of the Amazon | Artzilla.org
* From: Walter Langelaar
* Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 17:10:56 +0100
* Organization: moddr_
* Reply-to: walter {AT} wormweb.nl
* User-agent: [WORM] RoundCube Webmail/0.1-rc2

har!
this just released ::

*Pirates of the Amazon Add-on*

"How can you compete with free? You cant!"
Lawrence Lessig

The Firefox add-on "Pirates of the Amazon" inserts a "download 4 free"
button on Amazon, which links to corresponding Piratebay BitTorrents. The
add-on lowers the technical barrier to enable anyone to choose between "add
to shopping cart" or "download 4 free". Are you a pirate?

To download/install the add-on, and for more information on the project,
please visit »pirates-of-the-amazon.com

This release is part of the upcoming Launch Party of "Artzilla.org", which
will take place at WORM in Rotterdam on the 13th of December.
During this event the audience will be able to browse the net using several
artistic browser modifications and Firefox add-ons, in Artzilla.org's first
Firefox add-on exhibition participating artists include ::

Theo Watson
Aram Bartholl
Evan Roth
Dragan Espenschied
Timo Klok
Jamie Wilkinson
Danja Vasiliev
Tobias leingruber

Besides good tunes by surprise DJ's and live acts, the evening will also
host speed presentations by Theo Watson, Timo Klok, Danja Vasiliev and Evan
Roth - moderated by tobi-x and with special guests Florian Cramer
(/PietZwartInstituteMDMA/) and Hans Bernhard (/ubermorgen.com/) ...

For more info on this event, and for reservations, please visit
»agenda.wormweb.nl/agenda ··· ?id=2253

--
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|m|o|d|d|r|_| > | »moddr.net | | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |w|o|r|m| | > | »wormweb.nl | | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |h|o|m|e| | > | »lowstandart.net |
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______________________________________________________
* Verspreid via nettime-nl. Commercieel gebruik niet
* toegestaan zonder toestemming. is een
* open en ongemodereerde mailinglist over net-kritiek.
* Meer info, archief & anderstalige edities:
* »www.nettime.org/.
* Contact: Menno Grootveld (rabotnik {AT} xs4all.nl).
Timo Klok is the person who registered pirates-of-the-amazon.com -- so I guess we do know who sees the HTTP-REFERER info after all.

itsdownnow
@cogeco.net

itsdownnow

Anon

they took it down.

its something piratebay.org would be proud of. i bet they would even host it.

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

funchords

MVM

said by itsdownnow :

they took it down.

Which is really, really funny. Of all people, they should know that you can't really delete something like that once it's been on the Internet.