The announcement depicts either a teenage girl trying to illegally download a movie or a gang attempting to buy movies from a bootlegger interwoven with clips of a man committing theft of various objects, and equates these crimes to the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyrighted materials, such as films.[3][4] According to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, the announcement was unsuccessful, and was largely a source of ridicule.[3] Likewise, a 2022 behavioral economics paper published in The Information Society found the PSAs may have increased piracy rates.[5] By 2009, over 100 parodies of the announcement had been created.[2] It was reported that the music in the announcement was stolen and used without permission.[6][7] However, one source disputes this, saying the reporting is the result of conflation regarding a different anti-piracy ad that used stolen music.[8]
In popular culture
The advertisement has been parodied in Internet memes, including those using the phrase "You wouldn't download a car."[11][5] In 2007, The IT Crowd episode "Moss and the German" parodied the advertisement, mirroring its initial points before comparing copyright infringement to increasingly ludicrous crimes and consequences.[12] Finlo Rohrer of the BBC considered this version to be "perhaps the best known" of over 100 parodies of the ad that had been created by 2009.[2] In 2021, the old domain name used by the campaign (piracyisacrime.com) was purchased and redirected to a YouTube upload of the parody, possibly inspired by a Reddit discussion.[13] An advertisement for the 2008 film Futurama: Bender's Game parodied the campaign by having Bender repeatedly interrupt the narrator to say he would do the crimes described. The advertisement was titled "Downloading Often Is Terrible", or "D.O.I.T".[14]
The Greens-European Free Alliance, in association with Rafilm, released their own parody version of the film to oppose the media industry and government views on existing copyright laws, as well as to educate the public on alternative views about intellectual property.[15][16][17][18]
"You wouldn't screenshot an NFT" is a variant of the "You wouldn't steal a car" meme that satirizes non-fungible tokens,[19] based on the idea that the ease of making digital copies of the work of art associated with an NFT undermines the value of purchasing the NFT.
^"Be HIP at the Movies". Intellectual Property Office of Singapore. July 27, 2004. Archived from the original on September 24, 2008. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
^"I wouldn't steal". iwouldntsteal.net. The Greens-European Free Alliance. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
^"I wouldn't steal <video>". creativecommons.org. The Greens-European Free Alliance. January 26, 2008. Archived from the original on April 26, 2018. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
David, Matthew; Halbert, Debora, eds. (2014). "'Piracy' or Parody: Moral Panic in an Age of New Media". The SAGE Handbook of Intellectual Property. SAGE. ISBN978-1-4739-0902-1.