Firefox Addon Makes Pirating Music Easier

[vimeo 2380513]

The Amazon MP3 Store may have the lowest prices on DRM free music, but for some people 79 cents for a song is just too much, especially when [john] and the folks at pirates-of-the-amazon.com can help you get that song for free. Pirates of the Amazon is a slick Firefox addon that inserts a “download 4 free” button next to the “add to cart” button in the Amazon MP3 Store. After clicking on the button, the addon refers users to a thepiratebay.org search page with bittorrent download links for the song or album. While there is no question that this makes getting your music easier, by using this addon you do run the risk of violating copyright laws, depending on which country you live in.

There isn’t much here that hasn’t been thrown into Greasemonkey scripts in the past and we wonder if they’re marketing this to anyone at all. People who absolutely love using Amazon but hate buying stuff perhaps? They cite a couple interesting projects in their about section: Amazon Noir robotically abused the “Search Inside” feature to reconstruct entire books. OU Library searches your local library to see if it has the Amazon book you’re looking for.

36 thoughts on “Firefox Addon Makes Pirating Music Easier

  1. idk about this. if you’re already using the amazon system, you probably aren’t interested in torrenting the music
    and vice-versa: if you aren’t interested in paying for music, you’d probably never use the amazon system. now if they packaged this by default into firefox, for people who are just getting into mp3, that might capture a niche audience…

  2. ironic you post this on the day that two uk music distribution firms (EUK, pinnacle) shut their doors.

    this whole thing conjures up strong dislike – people who use ‘4’ instead of ‘for’ are only a couple of rungs up the ladder from sex offenders. music downloaders are lame – if you can’t afford 79 cents, you’re not really doing very well at life.

  3. I hate snitches — the editor. Some things should remain secret if you want to keep your treasures and gold. If I was piratebay, I would play the RIAA and sue the company for the plugin’ and make them 100% responsible for all illegal activity… $$$. setup for failure

  4. “if you aren’t interested in paying for music, you’d probably never use the amazon system.”
    Amazon has fantastic summaries of albums, and will let you preview tracks. It’s more useful than just handing over your money in exchange for a CD.

    But I am going to have to agree that putting this app on hackaday is kind of stupid, if not downright reprehensible. And a greasemonkey script capable of submitting a custom GET request is not even worthy of digg, much less hackaday.

  5. is this a windows firefox plugin or will it work on the mac version?

    because i do not see the button it is supposed to add.

    anyone got a picture of what the page is supposed to look like?

  6. “pirates-of-the-amazon.com is down now. see what ya did.”

    I do hope that was the intent.

    I don’t think was worth it to DDoS the site, though. You’re exposing Hack-A-Day to potential litigation and making it sound like this is a script-kiddie site at the same time.

  7. I rarely buy music anymore, on disability income, and not much new material that I like enough to want to listen to it on demand. I do capture music from the free to listen to web pages. Kinda like we tape recorded music off the radio, when AM was king. Now like then, more often than not, I settle for the radio

    Yeah like Pirate Bay will be suing anyone, admitting THEY may be making money facilitating others to break laws. Oh well…

  8. Seems like they have taken down the addon saying that it was only “was an artistic parody, part of our media research and education” Not that I condone publicly downloading music you didn’t buy. Seems as though they got too much attention with their new app.

  9. wow, you whiny pricks. we are in a fucking recession and most likely are going to go into a depression.. why would anyone in their RIGHT MIND buy shit they can get for free?

    LEARN TO NOT WHINE ABOUT TRIVIAL THINGS..

    If someone was giving out free food next to the grocery store would you go into the grocery store and BUY SHIT? (assuming there was nothing wrong with the food)

    Apply that reasoning to anything else that you can download off of the internet for free.

  10. I wish the musicians and authors who get their work pirated could steal the wages of those who commit the piracy. It absolutely AMAZES me how few people in this world are able to put themselves in the shoes of another. Clearly the world is full of people with no imaginations. Most musicians and authors are extremely low paid (the vast majority of authors actually make little more than “pocket-money” from their work) and if we download pirated editions of their CDs and books the only thing that will happen is the flow of music and books will eventually stop. After all, why should they work for nothing?

  11. In reality Copyright Laws should be re-written.
    In today’s world NOTHING IS ORIGINAL as artists and recording industry claims it to be! Be it digital recordings, old records, cassette tapes are not ORIGINALS! They are all sold COPIED from a master! How can recording industry or the artist claim it as ORIGINAL? If I buy a CD today, it is already copied version of orijinal. It means that recording industry and artists are distributing COPIED MATERIAL and they are committing piracy :)! If you put a song mp3 in your web site you are breaking the law even though you paid for it! Are they soon going to come after us for playing the music in parties? You know people who are attending the party are listening and dancing to their music for FREE :)

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