Hot news from the Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime project!

The plot:
The Bad Guys (The Amazon Noir Crew: Paolo Cirio, Alessandro Ludovico, Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard) stole copyrighted books from Amazon by using sophisticated robot-perversion-technology coded by Paolo Cirio. A media fight and a legal dispute escalated into an online showdown with the heist of over 3000 books at the center of the story.

The technology:
The Amazon Noir Robots (Sucker01-12) tricked around with Amazon Search Inside the Book function until it gave away the complete volumes of copyright protected books. This was carried out by sending 5.000 – 10.000 requests per book. After this process the data was logically reassembled into pdf-format by the SIB-Book-Generator (see the diagram.)

Amazon Noir was scripted as an internet-movie. The whole digital action (media hack) was carried out in the global massmedia, within the art world and on a highly sophisticated technical level in the clandestine matrix of our global networks.

Amazon USA, U.K., Germany and France were vulnerable targets. During the attack they transformed part of the Search Inside the Book technology to defend the rights of the copyright holders – without actually solving the problem. Over 3000 Books were downloaded and distributed through p2p between April and October 2006.

The end?
In July 2006 Amazon France and Amazon USA threatend to litigate. The matter was resolved out of court October 30th, 2006. Amazon (USA/France) bought the Amazon Noir software for an undisclosed sum – both parties signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Previous posts: The Big Book Crime and Interview with Ubermorgen.