Pirates_of_the_Amazon_firefox_add-on

original website=down, so posted here: 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? Version 0.6.1 beta; 30.11.2008; 13 KB drag'n'drop the .xpi file into an open Firefox browser-window, and away you go! Note: If you download content through a torrent link, provided by the Piratebay, you might violate current copyright laws. Instructions Prepare your ship in 4 steps: 1. To be able to download BitTorrent you have to have a BitTorrent software installed. Good ones are uTorrent for Windows and Transmission for Mac and Linux. 2. Click the "Download Now" button, click "allow", confirm install. 3. Confirm Firefox restart to activate the add-on. 4. Go to amazon and enjoy having the choice between "add to shopping cart" and "download 4 free". Background What's this all about? 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 It also shows that there is an alternative to buying overpriced media-products from companies relying on outdated distribution techniques.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 ) Background Information There have been similar browser modifications on the internet for quite a while such as the IMDB popular torrent search Firefox Greasemonkey script that adds links to torrent search results on the IMDB website. 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. We are not affiliated with the Piratebay, 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. When you choose to install the add-on, you modify the local behaviour of your webbrowser. If you download content through a torrent link, provided by the Piratebay, you might violate current copyright laws.

udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80
udp://open.demonii.com:1337
udp://tracker.coppersurfer.tk:6969
udp://exodus.desync.com:6969

dropdeadpiguglyness (2008-12-04)

DONT DOWNLOAD THIS FILE. iT CONTAINS A BACK DOOR TROJAN ON A TIMER...DOWNLOAD AT OWN RISK....

cl4es (2008-12-04)

haha thats ridiculous, it's not even a hundred lines of code - nothing malicious there at all... 100% safe

tmatte (2008-12-05)

Don't know what to believe here, any more opinions?

shyguy4343 (2008-12-06)

1.) It still works
2.) Its not a virus. Dont believe me? Unzip it and look inside. Its nothing but some javascript.
3.) Its also GPL'd since they pulled in some of Greasemonkey. Anyone want to fork it?

db87 (2008-12-06)

It's safe, I did a scan with http://virusscan.jotti.org/

agentshags (2008-12-06)

KEEP IT SEEDING PEOPLE
KEEP IT ALIVE!

nawcom (2008-12-06)

Yes, it does seem to work reasonably with movies. Games are another issue.
Example: GTA IV for Xbox 360 shows that it is available to download - which actually links it to the torrent for the PC version. However, if you go to the Amazon page for the PC version of GTA IV, it is listed as unavailable.
I looked at the code, and there can be a lot of major improvement on the entire thing. It's a simple greasemonkey script, and not that well done. Maybe later this morning I will seed a modified version that will be a ton more organized and accurate.

legaliamnot (2008-12-06)

@nawcom
If you do rewrite it, make sure it has internal pictures. Currently four are downloaded from:




I'm no java coder but I guess a user can alter the code by first unziping the xpi file, then making a new directory eg content/pics and putting the web pics there, rewriting content/piratesoftheamazon.js with links to the internal like this:
var loading_gif =
Finally zipping it up again before installing...
Putting the pics online probably was their idea of monitoring how this "art" project turned out ;-)

hac. (2008-12-07)

The pics have been removed from pirates-of-the-amazon.com. Could someone please post them somewhere? I woudn't mind helping @nawcom out with imbedding them within the extension or otherwise improving the source code.

hac. (2008-12-07)

@ha11ster
It works for me on some pages. For example, try this amazon page:
If it works you should see a broken image (but still perfectly functional link to TPB) under the titleto the right of the product image.

hac. (2008-12-07)

@ha11ster
Unfortunately, this software was orphaned by it's developers when Amazon's lawyers sent them a cease and desist:
That doesn't mean, of course, that we can't adopt it; I'm thinking of remaking it myself at the moment. However, I think that you might even be able to adapt this Greasemonkey script to get the features you want: http://adamv.com/dev/grease/moviedude/

hac. (2008-12-08)

I am currently working on a version with client side pictures. (And no modified user agent.) Hopefully I will be able to seed it tomorrow.

hac. (2008-12-08)

I have fixed the problems with the extension, and have made a new torrent: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4562234 However I do not know how long I can seed it for.

Ichtys (2008-12-09)

In order to fix the broken images, after installing the plugin, go to C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application
Here open the file piratesoftheamazon.js with a text editor and change the adresses of the images to ones that work. It could be on your local machine or at a webserver you know have them.

legaliamnot (2008-12-10)

Cudos to hac for his discovery that they _change_ your USER AGENT! People please stop seeding this version and use his version instead.
Here's a full diff (what has changed) between the versions (- denotes deletions, + is changes and additions):
diff -Nurp bad-old-version/chrome.manifest good-new-version/chrome.manifest
--- bad-old-version/chrome.manifest 2008-10-22 13:51:00.000000000 +0200
+++ good-new-version/chrome.manifest 2008-12-08 07:13:33.000000000 +0100
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
-content piratesoftheamazon content/
+content piratesoftheamazon content/ contentaccessible=yes
overlay chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
\ No newline at end of file
Binary files and differ
Binary files and differ
diff -Nurp
--- 2008-11-28 20:07:20.000000000 +0100
+++ 2008-12-08 07:28:49.000000000 +0100
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
+/*
+
+This is a modified version of the (mostly) abandoned Firefox extension, Pirates of the Amazon, originally written by Enrique B. and John S.
+Modifications:
+ - The download button image and loading image have been made internal to the extension, and error messages have been made text. Without this every one of these appears as a broken image, because the original developers made the extension dependant on their site, which now does not return the images. This also eliminates the possibility that the devs at pirates-of-the-amazon.com could collect information about you as you load the images. There are new images because I don't have access to the old ones.
+ - Your user agent is no longer modified, making it so that websites can not identifiy that you are using this extension.
+hac.
+
+ */
+
// ==UserScript==
// @name Pirates of the Amazon
// @namespace bla
@@ -22,10 +32,11 @@ catch(e)
try{
// Which site are we searching again ?
var URLname= "thepiratebay.se";
-var not_downloadable_image =
-var not_available_image =
-var download_now_image =
-var loading_gif =
+// Error images will not be used. Text is much more compact:
+//var not_downloadable_image =
+//var not_available_image =
+var download_now_image =
+var loading_gif =

// Find the title on the page
// And get rid off brackets and parenthese
@@ -34,7 +45,7 @@ if (titlefield == null){}
else
{
titlefield =
-temp = '';
+temp = '';
// add the image after the title
finalhtml = titlefield + temp;
finalhtml;
@@ -109,7 +120,7 @@ for ( i=0; i < BookList.length; i++ )
// does not match with a digital product
if (category == 0)
{
- newhtml = '';
+ newhtml = '(TPB torrents could not be found for this catagory.)'; //'';
ReplaceImage(newhtml);
}

@@ -127,7 +138,8 @@ if (category == 1)
url: newlink,
headers:
{
- "User-Agent":"Pirates-of-the-Amazon",
+ // Nobody changes my user agent.
+ //"User-Agent":"Pirates-of-the-Amazon",
//"Operating Ship": "HMS Bounty",
//"User-Agent":"Mozilla/5.0",
"Accept":"text/xml"
@@ -144,14 +156,14 @@ if (category == 1)
// if there was NO search result
// insert an 'not available' image
if (found3 ==