Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, J. Elliott

The Pirates of the Amazon Firefox extension, launched this week, provides a link to free downloads (at The Pirate Bay) of content that's available for sale on Amazon.com.

Another download, The Kraken, does, well, the opposite.

"When the [Pirates of the Amazon] add-on is installed, it integrates a new 'download 4 free' button into the Amazon product page when the same article is also available via The Pirate Bay," explains Ernesto at TorrentFreak. "It works for CDs, DVDs, games, books and basically all products that can be converted to a digital format."

But soon after the Pirates of the Amazon site was launched, it went down. "It's apparently hit some choppy waters," writes TechFlash's Eric Engleman. "The 'Pirates of the Amazon' site is down this morning, with the message: 'The ship was hit. We're offline.'"

According to the creators, the site received an immediate legal challenge from Amazon. "'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," the site now states. "It was a practical experiment on interface design, information access and currently debated issues in media culture."

At the same time, The Kraken, launched today, inserts Amazon.com purchase links into The Pirate Bay and Mininova. As the download site suggests, "For those with an attack of conscience (or simply impatience), here's a plug-in to help you sleep at night..."

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