Students in Rotterdam’s Piet Zwart Institute created a Firefox add-on that when installed integrates a “Download 4 Free” button on the Amazon page of any product available at the torrent site, The Pirate Bay. Now that is some bold illegal downloading.

This is said to work for CDs, DVDs, games and any other product that can be converted to a digital format, like books.

Apparently, the day after the website went live, Amazon’s legal team sunk their pirate ship and now their website displays a message about how this was all for a Media Design class and that the add-on was “an artistic parody” whatever that means.

They also go on to state that they were surprised by the attention and reactions the project was getting. Really? They were surprising? This is the internet equivalent of walking into a store and stealing a DVD, without even bothering to check Chinatown for bootlegs. 

But evidently, taking down the program from their own website was futile since TorrentFreak had already mirrored it and has it available for download here. 

And according to TorrentFreak, there are pirate skins for other websites like IMDB and Last.fm as well.

We can see why Amazon was pissed but even they have to admit, this is better than Super Saver Shipping.