"Pirates of the Amazon" was an artistic parody, part of our media research and education at the Media Design M.A. course at the Piet Zwart Institute of the Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It was a practical experiment on interface design, information access and currently debated issues in media culture. We were surprised by the attentions and the strong reactions this project received. Ultimately, the value of the project lies in these reactions. It is a ready-made and social sculpture of contemporary internet user culture.
One day after publishing we received a take down request by the legal department of Amazon.com.
This work was made as a trimester assignment in our study course, under the supervision of our tutor Denis Jaromil Rojo and our course director Florian Cramer. This page is now the documentation of our study work as required by the course.
This documentation is still in progress. December 9, 2008
Contact us at mail attt pirates-of-the-amazon.com
| 01-12-2008 | Launch of http://pirates-of-the-amazon.com |
| 02-12-2008 | Project appears on small blogs e.g. [1] [2] |
| 03-12-2008 | First major blog (torrentfreak.com) reports "Torrentfreak: Firefox Pirates Take Over Amazon" This article makes it on the digg.com frontage (more than 2500 diggs) Cnet picks it from digg and titles "Cnet: New Firefox extension turns Amazon.com into illegal free-for-all" Take down request from amazon.com, all the original content is removed |
| 04-12-2008 | Wired Online writes the article Wired: "Amazon.com Tossed Into Pirate Bay Jungle" Artistic response: The reverse add-on is published on cnet (inserts amazon buy-tips on piratebay and mininova) by spanderfox |
| 05-12-2008 | Course director Florian Cramer sends out Call for support: Pirates of the Amazon, taken down by Amazon.com to the nettime.org mailinglist, to gather statements for this website, which will be turned into a documentation. |
| 08-12-2008 | Rhizome.org, at the New Museum of contemporary art in NYC, writes: "Pirates of the Amazon" Creators Seek Statements of Support for Project |
| 09-12-2008 | This documentation is released |
"... By linking the BitTorrent search,engine [piratebay.org] to [Amazon.com] in such a way to reveal the 'links',between paid and free content, a critical operation is opened between the,two sites that, in its turn, opens a debate over the evolution of property,in the 21st century. Such critical scholarly work in the shape of software,,Firefox add-ons and other methods demonstrates its force precisely when it,is able to carry out what it conceptualizes. " - Tobias c. van Veen, McGill University, via nettime.org, December 5, 2008
"... It was a school project, and as a bit of coding ingenuity and social commentary, it has succeeded. I think the real issue here is that many people lack the ability to see something as social commentary, instead they'll see that something as made of pure, unadulterated hate, or illegal, or any combination of knee-jerk reactionary things." - Ozzy via wired.com comment, December 5, 2008 9:15 pm
"This for me -- much more than the amazon's reaction -- is what makes this project really interesting. This is not only about people being free to reject an art project. I don't think the relevant point is whether this is art or not (at least not for the people hating the project). Rather, it seems to reveal how much the "free culture movement" (if there ever was ,such a thing) has been reshaped as "web2.0" and how much it is now happy with this niche of "user generated content" or "amateur creativity"." - Felix Stalder, via nettime.org, December 6, 2008 at 3:42 pm
"... Good art often puts common subjects in new relationships and makes you think about them differently. Good art can also expose a problem which society has not solved. This works on many levels. When art threatens power it is often banned by those in power." - CB via New York Times comment, December 6, 2008 4:55 pm
"... Filesharing is mainstream, what is on the web is public. Strangely these are still taboos. Users don't want to be reminded of,them." - Olia Lialina, via nettime.org, December 6, 2008 00:24 CET
"... What media piracy - whether you believe it to be legally wrong or “just” morally wrong - teaches us is that the system of intellectual copyright is broken and unable to function properly in the age of capitalism and new media." - C., via New York Times Comment, December 9, 2008 11:59 am
"... Considering how much labor, outreach, and discussion has occurred around issues of copyright and the distribution of information over the past few years, the comments (which range from "That's just evil" to "Oh for god sakes can crooks be any more pathetic") are difficult to believe. If anything, they signal the need for more work to be done in the fight for free culture." - Ceci Moss , Rhizome.org Editor, via rhizome.org, on December 9, 2008