For whatever reason, the students are now claiming that their project was a "parody of any kind of media consumerism" and also an "experiment on interface design, information access, and currently debated issues in media culture." They claim that their project aimed to compare the seemingly opposite Amazon and Pirate Bay sites through practical application. Because the students called their plugin a parody, they receive some legal protection under United States copyright law, however many fail to see the humor in the parody and instead consider the project a scam to rip off one of America's largest firms.
Fortunately for the students, Florian Cramer, the media art course director at Piet Zwart, spoke out on the students' behalf, saying that the student's plugin was legal since the tool only provided rudimentary links between the two websites. He also stated that the internet community was reacting too harshly to the students and that the community as a whole was failing to understand the "artistic nature" of the project. Cramer believes that his students were preemptively censored and that this retribution from Amazon as well as the internet community will scare students from pursuing their art.
Although the design of computer programs can certainly be considered a form of art, I feel as though art has its limits. Designing complex or innovative programs that push the industry's envelope and help to further technology as a whole are obviously acceptable forms of this art and the student's program in question can be considered art as well, although it is far less acceptable. Amazon's issue with the program was never whether or not it was art, it was whether or not it was legal. The fact of the matter is that these two students with their art effectively robbed Amazon of millions of dollars by providing people with free access to Amazon's products. Not only does this hurt Amazon, it is also detrimental to all of the artists, writers, directors and actors whose intellectual property is being stolen through the free download of these movies books and music.
If a person downloads an artist's music for free through the use of bit torrent websites or through peer to peer networks, they can be prosecuted and punished for piracy of intellectual material. In this case, Amazon and the Pirate Bay are both just intermediaries that make this situation more indirect but still piracy no less. The fact of the matter is that because of the plugin that these students created, people all over the world are able to get something for nothing which, when dealing with art and intellectual property, is illegal.
Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/pirates-of-the-amazon-abandon-ship/
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