Amazon.com Add-On Hack Was a University Project

Submitted by MacRonin on December 5, 2008 - 10:34pm

Amazon.com Add-On Hack Was a University Project: Via Threat Level

The Firefox browser add-on that provided a "download 4 free" button on Amazon.com linking to freebies on The Pirate Bay was developed as part of a university project, a social parody of sorts for a media design class.

A tutor for the two students at the liberal art school, Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said in an e-mail Friday that he and the course instructor "supported and encouraged it from its early beginnings," tutor jaromil said.

"Apart from its humorous value and cleverness, the project is interesting on many levels and layers: For example, not just as a funny artistic hack of Amazon.com and The Pirate Bay, but also as a critique of mainstream media consumer culture creating the great 'content' overlap between the two sites," jaromil wrote.

The add-on created a user-interface link between Amazon and The Pirate Bay whereby a link on the Amazon site showed music, video and game shoppers where they could download what they were looking for free on The Pirate Bay, the world's largest illicit BitTorrent tracking service.

The website where the plug-in was available was shuttered by the school Wednesday when Amazon, the world's largest online retailer of Seattle, threatened litigation.

Still, the students were flummoxed by what they described as "openly hostile and aggressive internet user comments" over their coding invention. Jaromil said many comments on internet sites about the add-on were "disturbing."

Maybe it's a case of thin skin by the students. After all, it's a vicious internet out there.

There's more than 500 comments on Digg.com about the add-on when it was first disclosed by TorrentFreak. While some sing its praise, many do not.

One person called the explanation for the project  "absolute bullshit." Another said, "Great, just make it apparent you are stealing stuff." Still, another comment asked, "Wouldn't the type of person who would install this add-on be more likely to just visit the Pirate Bay and search for their media directly?"

What do Threat Levelers think?

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