Two Bad Open Source Add-ons

There have been posts circulating the blogosphere about a couple of add-ons recently: Pirates of the Amazon and IMDB Pirated Version. I believe they are a bad thing to have come during particularly bad times.

Pirates of Amazon is a Firefox add-on. Whenever a user visits a media page in Amazon (movies, TV shows, games, music), the add-on gives alternate torrent links from where the same product can be illegally downloaded for free.

IMDB Pirate Version is another general script that crossreferences titles on IMDB allowing users to search directly from the imdb page for subtitles, torrents and http (rapidshare,megaupload, and other hosts) movie releases, and view the movie trailer directly. I don’t mind the subtitles and movie trailer really; they are useful functionalities.

A few years ago music industry lost billions to piracy and has recently limped back to apparent normalcy. There are many who don’t give a damn one way or the other about piracy and those who justify it do so by claiming that the stars get paid way too much for their work. As a writer who reads more publishing news than any other kind of news, I have been reading about thousands of people losing their jobs in the publishing industry. Behind the highly-paid stars are legions of faceless people whose livelihood is at stake in any industry. No part of the economy is immune to the current slowdown and this is a worse time for irresponsible cheating of one another than any other. Please show restraint.