p2pnet news view | P2P:- Quoting Larry Lessig of Creative Commons fame, “How can you compete with free? – ask the people who built the newest Firefox add-on.

“You cant!”

And just in time for Christmas, too.

Pirates of the Amazon inserts a “download 4 free” button on Amazon, which links to corresponding The Pirate Bay BitTorrents, say the creators, Enrique B. and John S., being careful to observe:

“We are not affiliated with The Pirate Bay, and do not host or even link to any illegal content. This artistic project addresses the topic of current media distribution models vs. current culture and technical possibilities.”

The add-on lowers the technical barrier to enable anyone to choose between “add to shopping cart” or “download 4 free,” says the site, also noting, “If you download content through a torrent link, provided by the Piratebay, you might violate current copyright laws.”‘

What’s it all about?

It’s a net-art project supported by the Piet Zwart Institute and moddr_ medialab, say Enrique and John, continuing »»»

This add-on provides a simple interface to torrent files, combining a torrent search engine with the information features offered by amazon. It also shows that there is an alternative to buying overpriced media-products from companies relying on outdated distribution techniques.
“Pirates of the Amazon” offers to be a counterpart to the current models of media distribution. “Redistribute the wealth” by bringing together one of the world’s biggest e-commerce platforms with the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.

Established media distributors claim that peer-to-peer networks are the death for entertainment media itself. These claims sound quite similar to the ones about the printing press or the invention of VCRs or CDR-Drives. The truth is that the possibility of information sharing inspires people to start creating, remixing and enriching the media landscape.

“Lets build a world we are proud of, not just a profitable world for a few very large media companies. ” (Brewster Kahle, founder of the internet archive )

For more information on piracy and the BitTorrent protocol follow these links:

– “After the crash, or how we stopped worrying and learned to love P2P” by Jamie King
- Piratology by Armin Medosch
- Peer-to-Peer on Wikipedia
- The Pirate Bay on Wikipedia

They also point out similar browser mods such as the IMDB popular torrent search Firefox Greasemonkey script which adds links to torrent search results on the IMDB website are also out there, adding:

“The OU Library Amazon Greasemonkey Script uses Amazon as an interface to find books at public libraries. (Rent 4 free)
The project Amazon Noir by the net artists ubermorgen.com allowed users to download free books from amazon by overusing the amazon “search inside” function.”

Stay tuned.

Did you enjoy this story, or find it interesting/useful? Help keep the posts coming by donating. No amount is too small. Cheers! And thanks.

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am and is filed under P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 7296 times