You Wouldn't Steal a Car

"You Wouldn't Steal a Car" is the first sentence of a public service announcement created in July 2004, which was part of the anti-copyright infringement campaign "Piracy. It's a crime." It was created by the Federation Against Copyright Theft and the Motion Picture Association of America in cooperation with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore,^[1][2] and appeared in theaters internationally from 2004 until 2007, and on many commercial DVDs during the same period as a clip before the main menu or other previews appear, as either an unskippable or skippable video.

The announcement depicts either a 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 compares 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."^[9][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.^[10] 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 was purchased and redirected to a YouTube upload of the parody, possibly inspired by a Reddit discussion.^[11] 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".^[12]

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.^{[13][14][15][16]}

In 2017, The Juice Media produced a controversial parody of the video for Australia Day. The video compared the celebration of Australia Day, which marks the arrival of the First Fleet and is often referred to as "Invasion Day" by Indigenous Australians, to celebrating the Nazis' Final Solution, dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the September 11 attacks.^[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.^[20]

See also

• Beware of Illegal Video Cassettes
• Don't Copy That Floppy
• Home Recording Rights Coalition
• Home Taping Is Killing Music
• Knock-off Nigel
• Piracy is theft
• Public information film (PIF)
• Public service announcement
• Spin (public relations)
• Steal This Film
• Who Makes Movies?
• You can click, but you can't hide

References

1. . Intellectual Property Office of Singapore. July 27, 2004. Archived from the original on September 24, 2008. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
2. Finlo Rohrer (June 18, 2009). "Getting inside a downloader's head". BBC. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
3. Harris, Sophia (March 28, 2017). "Netflix's anti-piracy team aims to make stealing content uncool". CBC.ca. from the original on November 12, 2020.
4. Poon, Christopher. "'You wouldn't steal a car,' but I'd download one | Dot Comrade | Pique Newsmagazine | Whistler, CANADA". Pique Newsmagazine. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
5. Gault, Matthew (August 2, 2022). "Widely Mocked Anti-Piracy Ads Made People Pirate More, Study Finds". Vice. from the original on August 15, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
6. "Anti-Piracy Advert Music Was Stolen". The Ransom Note. from the original on August 14, 2021.
7. S. Kruszelnicki, Karl (January 29, 2013). "Anti-pirating ad music stolen". ABC News. from the original on August 14, 2021.
8. Van der Sar, Ernesto (June 25, 2017). "Sorry, the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" Anti-Piracy Ad Wasn't "Pirated"". TorrentFreak. from the original on August 3, 2021.
9. . Geek.com. March 5, 2013. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved November 27, 2020.
10. "The IT Crowd - Series 2 - Episode 3: Piracy warning". YouTube. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
11. Van der Sar, Ernesto (September 5, 2021). "Iconic "Piracy Is a Crime" Domain Now Redirects to IT-Crowd Parody". TorrentFreak. from the original on July 4, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
12. Maxwell, Andy (October 31, 2008). "Futurama's Anti-Piracy Message, Just Do It". TorrentFreak. from the original on April 17, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
13. "European Politicians Launch Pro-Filesharing Campaign". Torrent Freak. Retrieved September 28, 2021.
14. ""I Wouldn't Steal": European Greens advocate file-swapping". ars TECHNICA. January 21, 2008. Retrieved September 28, 2021.
15. . iwouldntsteal.net. The Greens-European Free Alliance. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
16. "I wouldn't steal <video>". creativecommons.org. The Greens-European Free Alliance. January 26, 2008. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
17. thejuicemedia (January 24, 2017), Australia Day (Piracy parody), archived from the original on December 21, 2021, retrieved June 17, 2018
18. "This Video Compares Australian Settlement To 9/11, Hiroshima And The Holocaust". BuzzFeed. Retrieved June 17, 2018.
19. Clarendon, Dan (February 21, 2022). "Do NFTs Have a Screenshot Issue?". Retrieved October 1, 2022.
20. Craig, Jeffrey (May 10, 2022). "Why Screenshots Don't Break NFTs". Retrieved October 1, 2022. One of the most commonly asked questions by people entering the NFT space is why anyone would pay so much to acquire an NFT when you can screenshot or download the associated media. If you're a meme connoisseur, you may have seen the NFT screenshot meme, or variations of it, floating all over the web.

External links

• Video of the public service announcement on YouTube