Yes, I’m well aware that the number one is the product of a talent show that’s produced and part-judged by a record company executive.

But sitting at number two is a record that wasn’t even officially re-released, that’s sung by a man who died 11 years ago. And the reason it’s sitting pretty during the busiest chart week of the year is that a Facebook Group was so worried that the X-Factor winner was going to murder Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, that they urged everyone to download the peerless Jeff Buckley version instead. Even Cohen’s own version of the song is sitting at number 36.  

Meanwhile, a further glance down the chart reveals The Pogues and Kirsty Maccoll’s Fairytale of New York at number 12, Mariah Carey’s pitiful All I want For Christmas at 17, Wham’s Last Christmas at 27,  and Wizzard at 33.  

I’m going home and digging out the luminous socks – it’s like 1985 again! 

Amazon’s new MP3 store has finally been launched without DRM, with decent 256kbps tracks and some initial prices that certainly catch the eye (although not Tim’s). All good stuff, if a bit late to the party – but one mischievously timed little add-on could have a much greater impact on the industry.

It’s a Firefox plug-in that’s freely available if you know where to look (I won’t be telling you), that essentially turns the official Amazon.com retail site into a candy shop for freeloaders. You’ll see from the screengrab above that a little – ok, huge – extra button appears on every item page, telling you in no uncertain terms that you don’t really have to be spending your hard-earned cash on that round, shiny thing that spins round and makes noise come out of a stereo.

Click on “Download 4 free” and your BitTorrent client will fire up, show you which songs you’ve chosen, and whizz them all from someone else’s hard disk to yours in seconds. No trawling torrent portals, no searching through warez sites, just a nice, fat torrent on a plate. And the cherry on top is that the Amazon site will innocently recommend artists to you as usual to help you make up your mind what to go for… until you just grab the whole lot and scarper. Maniacal laughing optional.

Admittedly it’ll mainly be used by the same people who already get all their music from BitTorrent, but it makes it so easy that there’s a danger it’s simple enough that it could attract those who only don’t do it because they don’t know how.

It’s not the first exploit of its kind – there’s been one that links to torrents directly from IMDB, another that hacks the Amazon “search inside” function to download free books – but this is the most outrageous and ballsy I’ve yet seen, and just adds to the feeling Tim spoke about in his blog, that for a certain generation today, illegal downloads are seen as perfectly legit.

We’ve no doubt the lawyers are on the case already, (the makers do warn you that you may be about to violate copyright laws, which is noble of them; they also call it an artistic project that “addresses the topic of current media distribution models vs. current culture and technical possibilities.” How very Banksy.) But as these torrent portals and networks have proven notoriously difficult to stop, it’s hard to see what sites like Amazon can do in the long run.

Scrapping DRM for its store was an admission of sorts that it simply can’t prevent piracy in that way, but while we’re all sitting here applauding them for doing the decent thing, the pirates are already another three steps ahead.

It’s not the only torrent portal on the list, either, with Mininova sitting pretty at number 52. That’s higher than whole host of hugely popular and well-respected sites – about.com, for instance, languishes at number 78, and popular bohemian hangout DeviantArt lurks at 77. Blogging behemoth LiveJournal is just behind, too, at 56.

All this is evidence that the pirating of illegal files – be it games, movies, music or software – is a huge business. If it were legitimate, it’d probably be discussed as a burgeoning industry worth investing in. And, with the much-vaunted credit crunch upon us, people acquiring their favourite games, albums and movies from less-than-legal sources is, surely, going to rise. Couple a lack of disposable income with the proliferation of unlimited broadband deals and, surely, piracy will get worse.

And, yet, what can be done about it? The popularity seems to be akin to a bloke in the local pub offering around some dodgy merchandise he’s ‘acquired’ – a bit like Twiggy in The Royle Family – but on a much larger scale. Schemes have already been trialled: Starforce was meant to stop games being copied, but just infuriated hordes of gamers, who probably ran straight to The Pirate Bay to find a healthily-seeded torrent of Call of Duty 4. Crytek, developers of Crysis, our 3D benchmark game of choice, has already announced that future titles will be console-centric, such is the cost to their company of piracy.

Steam, surely, is the way it should be done. It’s been adopted by thousands of gamers and provides a simple way for people to buy and download games. The massive increase in the number of users and games available suggests that they’re doing something right.

And, yet, the piracy continues – it seems that experienced internet users believe that they should be getting everything for nothing these days. Another school of thought suggests that people ‘try before they buy’, and download a game, or an album, before shelling out for a physical copy if they’re suitably impressed. Undoubtedly, though, plenty of people are helping themselves to whatever they want with little fear of repercussions – as with the bloke in the pub with a bag of dodgy jeans, there’s little that can be done to stop it.

It’s an odd conundrum, and one that’s cost more than just lost sales: jobs, homes, cars and companies have, no doubt, been lost as a result of more people pilfering things for free than paying full price. It’s certainly an issue, and one that hasn’t been solved yet. So, what do you think? Are you an avid, rum-drinking pirate of the cyber-seas, or do you make a point of paying full price for software, CDs and movies that you think are worth it?

And how would you put a stop to such a destructive practise?