"Pirates of the Amazon" gets sunk by Amazon
The art project/mass piracy enabler that was the ‘Pirates of the Amazon’ extension from Firefox has been hit by a broadside from Amazon, who boarded the boat with their lawyers and sent the group of students a take-down notice.
The students, for their part, say the extension was intended as an artistic parody. They study media design at the Piet Zwart Institute of the Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool in Holland, and claim “It was a practical experiment on interface design, information access, and currently debated issues in media culture”.
It seems they’re not making it up, either. Their teacher has popped up and defended them, saying:
“With the take-down notice from Amazon.com, our students have been scared away from pursuing their art, research and learning in our institute. We do not want a culture in which students have to preemptively censor their study because their work confronts culture with controversial and challenging issues.”
That’s as may be, but if I walked into a shop and stuck “Steal me!” stickers on everything, then I’m pretty damn sure I’d get thrown out.
Pirates of the Amazon website (via CNet)
