Freedom of speech and the pursuit as art as cheap excuse for facilitating piracy?

This week two students from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, made headlines by releasing an add-on for Firefox that enabled users browsing for books, music and movies on Amazon to download the same products for free through the Pirate Bay.

The reaction from Amazon and the entertainment industry was swift: the ISP received a notice-and-takedown request. By the end of this week the students complied and removed the add-on. In response the students claimed their project was merely:

“an experiment on interface design, information access and currently debated issues in media culture”

The course director of the Media Design program at the Piet Zwart Institute stated that Pirates of the Amazon was legal, since the tool merely linked between the Piratebay and Amazon. He was suprised that people did not see the artistic value of the project and worried about censorship:

“With the take down notice from Amazon.com, our students have been scared away from pursuing their art, research and learning in our institute”

While art and freedom of speech are obviously important values to protect, it does feel that in this context they are merely used as excuses for facilitating piracy...