Firefox Pirates Lay Siege to Amazon

anti_strunt

New member
Aug 26, 2008
253
0
0
Fragamoo said:
anti_strunt said:
Lvl 64 Klutz said:
And there are still people out there who convince themselves that pirating doesn't hurt anyone >_>
Well, economically speaking, since electronic information can be infinitely duplicated without an marginal cost, the only economically efficient solution is for it to be universally available: piracy thus (rather inadvertedly) leads to the optimal distribution of electronic "goods".

Still sucks if you're they whose stuff gets nicked, but hey! You can't argue with economics...
Your argument sort of holds together, until you factor in that if software is made universally available (without cost to the user) then companies will stop making any software because they can't get any money out of it.
I was going to add something about protecting intellectual property rights to ensure innovation by guaranteeing return on research investment (or programming, in this case), but that's macroeconomics. Microeconomics is much more fun, as the equations always add up properly.

The real world rarely has the same good taste.
 

DamienHell

New member
Oct 17, 2007
656
0
0
Lazy pirates, your supose to have to look for a safe, virus-free copy of what you want; thats where your sympathy votes come from.
"Those pirates are hurting the industry"
"But remember the risks they carry, all those dangerous torrents"
"Your right, poor dears"
 

klc0100

New member
Feb 29, 2008
565
0
0
The_root_of_all_evil said:
To Amazon, this is the equivalent of a junkie sitting outside your shop doors and promising to nick anything you want without the shop owner even being aware of it.
That would be a great public service.
 

mkb07a

New member
Oct 11, 2008
249
0
0
It's been stated already but they are getting crappy copies of stuff- that doesn't make it right, at all though. If may not be stealing per se, as digital copies technically belong to no one and are infinite in number, but it's still infringement, regardless of it being a Greasemonkey add-in on Amazon- it's just making it easier to find the illegal copy.

And come on! Amazon's music downloads are cheaper than iTunes and if you're really trying to stretch your buck, I think Rhapsody is even better... Sigh. I like Amazon. They treat me well, but I'm one of those old fogies who still buys the CD of albums because it feels more "right."
 

Cock

New member
Dec 4, 2008
2
0
0
There are some solutions to this problem:

1. Ban Firefox
2. Shutdown Internet
3. Disable Amazon
4. Make people buy overpriced shit
5. Commit ritual suicide
6. Nuke China
over 9000. ?????
8. PROFIT!!!
 

Alex_P

All I really do is threadcrap
Mar 27, 2008
2,712
0
0
Key points:

It's not an "exploit" in the conventional computer-security sense of the word. There is no vulnerability in Firefox or Amazon. Amazon's database of products and reviews is being abused, but there is no security risk to them or their customers (other than the risk anyone who chooses to install the pirate-script faces from, well, installing software written by pirates). This is no different from a spider crawling Amazon to get the same info.

Likewise, nothing is being stolen from Amazon. Amazon's results are merely being mushed together with a pirate site's.

"So, when you want to buy something, as long as it's available in digital media, you'll get the illegal copy instead" implies that the user actually goes off to buy the product but semi-unknowingly gets a free-and-very-illegal torrent instead. This is untrue. The script merely adds a giant "CLICK HERE TO BREAK THE LAW" link to the page (well, okay, from the screenshot it looks like the actual text is "Download 4 free").

Other than deliberately obfuscating and polluting it with all kinds of junk in a vain effort to defeat a moving target, there's no way to prevent this kind of thing. You can't control what a user's browser does to a page once you've served it.

-- Alex
 

ukslim

New member
Sep 27, 2007
37
0
0
"The infamous Greasemonkey".

Others have said it; I'm going to try to be clearer. There's a stack of tools running inside each other. Windows -> Firefox -> Greasemonkey -> Naughty_piracy_assistant.

Greasemonkey is no more "infamous" than Firefox or Windows itself. Only Naughty_piracy_assistant is slightly naughty. And all *that* does is annotate Amazon pages with search results from torrent sites.

Take a look at all the non-naughty Greasemonkey scripts at http://userscripts.org/scripts
 

Dommyboy

New member
Jul 20, 2008
2,439
0
0
ukslim said:
"The infamous Greasemonkey".

Others have said it; I'm going to try to be clearer. There's a stack of tools running inside each other. Windows -> Firefox -> Greasemonkey -> Naughty_piracy_assistant.

Greasemonkey is no more "infamous" than Firefox or Windows itself. Only Naughty_piracy_assistant is slightly naughty. And all *that* does is annotate Amazon pages with search results from torrent sites.

Take a look at all the non-naughty Greasemonkey scripts at http://userscripts.org/scripts
When it comes down to it, most Greasemonkey scripts are just illegal ways to perform tasks in convenient ways.
 

Gitsnik

New member
May 13, 2008
798
0
0
The_root_of_all_evil said:
So, not only is it allowing, some might say promoting, copyright infringement; it's doing so under the guise of legality (which could have implications on Amazon) and giving hits to the torrent site available.
Of course anyone with Greasemonkey installed is probably well aware of the consequences of their actions. This is a moot comment, I'm quoting the post for the following:

The_root_of_all_evil said:
From what I can ascertain, no money is trading hands at the moment, but given that the script COULD easily perform illegal activities, I think that it's going to escalate.
There's a quote (maybe on bash.org - I'm not sure, it might even be in the original Netcat readme file) that goes something along the lines of "You can use a swiss army knife to disassemble a car just as easily as you can use it to put one together". The script itself is dangerous, but please try not to blame Greasemonkey for it (I got bored and wrote a little TCP proxy to do something very similar to this months ago when I was pentesting a site).

For some examples of good greasemonkeys:

* My workplace's remote OWA (2k7) needs to be refreshed once a minute automatically, for some reason the basic interface (i.e. Firefox OWA interface) doesn't support this - the IE version might - so I have a greasemonkey refreshing it every minute.
* My bank has no support for remembering my account numbers, so a quick greasemonkey so that I can select them from a list rather than having to type them in.
* Auto populating employee information for contracting jobsheets

By the way I happen to agree that the title is misleading, though I don't feel that it was intentional on your behalf.

Gits.
 

SaintWaldo

Interzone Vagabond
Jun 10, 2008
923
0
0
The_root_of_all_evil said:
SaintWaldo said:
As it stands, the current title is misleading at best, purposefully bombastic at worst.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I see nothing misleading in the title. Pirates who use Firefox are attacking Amazon; the lede is provided by TorrentFreak, as is stated.
I wasn't blaming you, and TorrentFreak doesn't claim to follow a style guide. Escapist does.

Judging by your responses, you also obviously don't understand the technology in question here, so I'll file this story under, "Nice Try". Put your hair-fire out, this isn't actually news.
 

Doug

New member
Apr 23, 2008
5,205
0
0
fish food carl said:
Lvl 64 Klutz said:
And there are still people out there who convince themselves that pirating doesn't hurt anyone >_>
I think that "hurt" is a bad way to put it. While I agree that pirating isn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be, you can't just say "Why should I pay for something? Outrageous!"

It's a stupid outlook, when you look at pro-pirating arguments. Just tell them, "Are you taking something for free, when you should be paying for it?"

"Well, yeah"

"Then it's theft. It's not that hard to comprehend."
Well done! You've put the anti-piracy argument simply.
 

SaintWaldo

Interzone Vagabond
Jun 10, 2008
923
0
0
Actually, on the whole misleading title sub-topic, I agree with the title if it means this Firefox [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/]. I still disagree with the siege descriptor, but that's on TorrentFreak, not the OP.
 

ukslim

New member
Sep 27, 2007
37
0
0
Dommyboy said:
When it comes down to it, most Greasemonkey scripts are just illegal ways to perform tasks in convenient ways.
Counter-examples abound!

The reason I first downloaded GreaseMonkey was for the Flickr AllSizes++ script. This makes Flickr's "all sizes" interface a bit more whizzy, and supplements the copiable HTML box with a bbcode version, so you can easily embed Flickr pictures in forum posts. It actually *helps* Flickr, by making it easier to paste an image with a link back to them (per their TOS) than it is to just paste the image.

Another example currently on the front page of userscripts.org, is a script that makes F4 a "subscribe to this page in Google Reader" key. Legal. Good for Google. Good for the page owner (because they welcome RSS subscribers).

Plenty of Greasemonkey scripts make the Web better, and are a win-win for everyone.
 
Feb 13, 2008
19,430
0
0
ukslim said:
Plenty of Greasemonkey scripts make the Web better, and are a win-win for everyone.
However, make damn sure you are actually using Greasemonkey... [http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/12/04/1536231.shtml]
 

man-man

Senior Member
Jan 21, 2008
163
0
21
It bears repeating given the amount of misunderstanding apparent here - nothing is being stolen from Amazon, there is no illegal hacking going on here. All that happens is that the Amazon page has a link to some search results from ThePirateBay put in alongside the normal page. All nicely client-side and without anything malicious going out to anyone.

The_root_of_all_evil said:
To Amazon, this is the equivalent of a junkie sitting outside your shop doors and promising to nick anything you want without the shop owner even being aware of it.
It's a lot more like a customer asking someone to come in with them, follow them around and let them know where they can get the things they see in the shop for free, from somewhere else.

The_root_of_all_evil said:
Possibly, from what I've heard of Greasemonkey, it's almost considered an exploit in itself.
Then you've been listening to the wrong people. Greasemonkey can only be used to edit the html of pages after they've been downloaded to your own machine - maybe you want it to find words and replace them with humourous alternatives as in the "Surf like a pirate" script, or seek out autoloading media players and deactivate them, or use it to put a button on the page to download the video you're watching.

Sure, it can be used to help you do things that are morally dubious, but all it actually does is edit a web page (entirely for the purposes of your computer alone) before it gets displayed... nothing illegal or exploitative there.

fish food carl said:
It's a stupid outlook, when you look at pro-pirating arguments. Just tell them, "Are you taking something for free, when you should be paying for it?"

"Well, yeah"

"Then it's theft. It's not that hard to comprehend."


Theft and piracy are distinct crimes, theft is not piracy and piracy is not theft. They are covered by different laws and have different penalties, and depending on what country you're in it is possible for one to be legal without the other. Of course if it's been legalised then it ceases to be piracy or infringement (because it's legal) but you know what I mean.

Both are, in most places, illegal, but theft is generally considered a more serious crime than copyright infringement (and technically piracy normally involves boats).