[aha] Call for support: Pirates of the Amazon,taken down by Amazon.com

[gadda1944]

Be', lavoro brillante (quello dei due studenti) e notizia grave (quella del take down ispirato da Amazon: take down efficace, visto che l'indirizzo www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com mi genera sul browser un 404, insomma ilo sito è chiuso).

Perché aha non prova a mettere in piedi una specie di centro informazioni sulla censura in rete? Abbiamo i contributi di Epto, xD e altri. Il comunicato di jaromil e Cramer merita di essere diffuso il più possibile. Nel mio piccolo, vedrò cosa fare.

g.

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>From      : aha-bounces at ecn.org
To          : "List on artistic activism and net culture" aha at ecn.org
Cc          : 
Date      : Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:39:57 +0100
Subject : [aha] Call for support: Pirates of the Amazon, taken down by Amazon.com







> Di seguito vi riporto la richiesta di supporto per un lavoro 
> interessante creato da due ragazzi a Rotterdam che è stato subito 
> bloccato da interventi legali.
> 
> Il progetto si chiama Pirates of Amazon 
> http://www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com/, si tratta di un Add on di firefox 
> che se installato inserisce nelle pagine del sito Amazon un grande 
> bottone con la scritta "Download for free". Praticamente se cercate di 
> aquistare un film o un dvd il componente in backgroud effettua una 
> ricerca su The  Pirate Bay http://thepiratebay.org/ e restituisce il 
> primo link che trova collegandolo al bottone che inserisce da cui potete 
> scaricare il file torrent corrispondente. Messo online introno al 30 
> Novembre, le reazioni di Amazon non si sono fatte aspettare.
> 
> Di seguito la call per il supporto all'operazione:
> 
> re all,
> 
> (with apologies for crossposting)
> 
> Many      spectres     might      already     have      read     about
> www.pirates-of-the-amazon.com. The  website provided a  Firefox add-on
> that changed the experience of  browsing Amazon.com by putting a slick
> "Download 4 Free"  button on top of every product -  whether a CD, DVD
> or book - also listed as  a bittorrent on The Pirate Bay. Clicking the
> button on the Amazon.com product page for, say, Madonna's latest album
> would  yield a  background search  on The  Pirate Bay  and start  up a
> bittorrent client to download a corresponding torrent.
> 
> After being published  this Monday, the project made  headline news on
> digg.com
> <http://digg.com/tech_news/Shop_Amazon_For_Free_w_Firefox_Add_on_Linking_to_Pirate_Bay>
> and     has     been      covered     among     others     by     CNET
> <http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10112541-12.html>, the Washington
> Post
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120401751.html>
> and currently more than 1000 blog entries worldwide.
> 
> Via  its provider, the  project received  a take  down request  by the
> lawyers  of Amazon.com  yesterday. In  our  point of  view, the  legal
> grounds  for that  are contestable  since  the add-on  itself did  not
> download anything. It only provided  a user interface link between the
> web sites Amazon.com  and thepiratebay.org. Nevertheless, the creators
> complied to the request, taking  both the add-on and original web site
> offline.
> 
> What is  perhaps more disturbing  however, are the openly  hostile and
> aggressive Internet user comments in  blogs and on digg.com. Unlike in
> a comparable  situation only  a couple of  years ago, the  majority of
> commentators failed  to see the highly parodistic  and artistic nature
> of "Pirates of  the Amazon".  The project was  created by two students
> at  the Media  Design  M.A.  department of  the  Piet Zwart  Institute
> Rotterdam, one of them being a  student in the course, the other being
> an  exchange student  from the  New Media  programme of  Merz Akademie
> Stuttgart.  The work was  part of  a regular  trimester project.  We -
> jaromil, the project tutor, and Florian Cramer, the head of the course
> - - were  the  academic  supervisors  of  this work.  We  supported  and
> encouraged it from its early  beginnings.  What's more, we're proud to
> have  such  students and  such  interesting  work  coming out  of  our
> teaching.
> 
> 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. We clearly  see this project
> as a practical media experiment and artistic design investigation into
> the  status of  media creation,  distribution and  consumption  on the
> Internet.
> 
> 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.
> 
> We would like  to gather statements in support of  the "Pirates of the
> Amazon". The students are turning their web sites into a documentation
> of their project and the reactions  it triggered. If you would like to
> support them  and contribute  a short statement,  please get  in touch
> with us.
> 
> Florian Cramer & jaromil
> 
> 
> -- 
>      [IIIII]   lo|bo
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