Don't Copy That Floppy! Gets a Sequel

theodp writes "Back in 1992, the SIIA released Don't Copy That Floppy!, a goofy video in which anti-piracy rapper MC Double Def DP convinces a young lad not to copy a game by appealing to his sense of right and wrong. Now, to address what it calls 'new generations and new temptations,' the SIIA has uploaded a trailer for a new anti-piracy rap video — Don't Copy That 2 — that will be released this summer. To underscore the video's it's-not-just-a-copy-it's-a-crime message, the new film is a tad darker than the original. A smug teen who's downloading files from 'Pirates Palace' and 'Tune Weasel' finds his world turned upside down when automatic weapons-toting government agents break down the door and take his Mom away in handcuffs. The teen finds himself in a prison jumpsuit forced to tattoo shirtless adult inmates who eventually turn on him, physically attack him, and make him run for his life back to his jail cell (image summarizing his plight)."

Comments

Dangerous stuff

[harmonise]

...finds his world turned upside down when automatic weapons-toting government agents break down the door and take his Mom away in handcuffs. The teen finds himself in a prison jumpsuit forced to tattoo shirtless adult inmates who eventually turn on him, physically attack him, and make him run for his life back to his jail cell

The message I get from this is, "Wow, movies and music sound like dangerous stuff. I better avoid them at all costs whether purchased legally or not."

SIIA Members: Google, IBM, Adobe, Intel, Oracle...

[theodp]

A selection of U.S. companies from the SIIA Member Directory: Accenture, Adobe, AOL, Barclays, Bloomberg, CNN, Charles Schwab, Citi, Cognizant, CollabNet, College Board, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, Infosys, Intel, Intuit, JPMorgan Chase, Lazard Freres, McGraw Hill, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Novell, Oracle, Reuters, Salesforce, SAP, SAS, Standard & Poor's, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Time Warner, UPI, The Wall Street Journal, Wells Fargo Bank.

Re:A better video

[Anonymous Coward]

"This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions."
so use: instead try http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9ovyz_the-it-crowd-anti-piracy-ad_fun

p.s and the show is on channel4 not bbc

Re:The new U.S.: Violence is entirely acceptable.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Don't give Cheney too much credit. State violence in support of corporate interest has been as American as apple pie since before he was a gleam in the milkman's eye.

Re:Where have I heard these scare tactics before?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know who's talking about evil, evil cops or hourly raids (maybe you should smoke a little bit less), but do you really have to be a pro-pot propaganda pusher to question no-knock SWAT raids based on shaky drug informants' information?

It sounds like a bit of a problem to me -- people ('evil' police included) even sometimes die as a result.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Frederick.

Re:Scare tatics

[SplashMyBandit]

Just to put some facts into perspective (you unfortunately appear to have crossed some facts, otherwise your post is otherwise relatively sound - must all be the weed you're getting)

• Opium poppies are used to produce opium and can then be refined into heroin. Initially the Taliban (who are not Al Qaeda, but host them) were against drug production but have now resorted to hosting drug lords to fund their fight against the Western infidels (this really does remove what little moral high ground they might claim to have had).
• Cocaine is derived from coca leaves (mostly grown in South America, which is rather far away from Afghanistan), and the Columbian government has had some success in reducing this (during its grinding war against FARC that has picked up successful momentum).

In both cases (Afghanistan, Columbia) the drug trade (opium, cocaine) is used to fund rebellion against the central government. Destroy the drugs and the rebellion struggles. The Afghan farmers complain that legitimate crops pay poorly compared to poppies so pressure the Afghan government to resist Western suggestions of aerial crop eradication. It is unlikely that demand in the West for recreational drugs will be reduced completely (the recession helps aparently) so it crop eradication is a better bet in winning the drug war. Saffron is a substitute that pays better than wheat (provided it can be grown successfully).

Re:Don't download this song

[TBoon]

Ironically, "This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions."

Re:BILLY MAYS HERE...

[emjay88]

You might not like the original, but you might like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d82Lq2rVB_4

Re:BILLY MAYS HERE...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me this is sarcasm. I remember going through DARE and how my peers became interested in cannabis and alcohol soon afterwards. DARE had little to no effect on my age group.

Definition of Theft

[YttriumOxide]

Anyways, stealing is not necessarily defined by depriving one person of an experience or possession, it's defined by obtaining said item without giving the original author or owner the compensation requested for your copy.

Are you sure? IANAL, but here's a few definitions I found from different legal texts around the world... (bold emphasis mine)

• "A person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.": UK Theft Act 1968, Section 1
• "Unlawfully appropriating property with intent to deprive the owner of property" : Texas Penal Code, Title 7, Paragraph 31.03
• "Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;": Canada Criminal Code, Section 322
• "A person is guilty of an offence if: the person dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of the property.": Australian Criminal Code Amendment (Theft, Fraud, Bribery and Related Offences) Act 2000, Part 7.2, Division 131.1

I certainly won't argue that piracy isn't a crime, but it definitely does NOT appear to be "theft"...

Re:Definition of Theft

[Danse]

At any rate, the common vernacular leans to theft; and that's the usage, form a non-legal standpoint, that will probably win out as well. Though, in the end, what you call it doesn't change that it it is wrong to use copyrighted material without permission, except in a few very limited cases.

Actually it's illegal to infringe on a copyright. I'm really not convinced that it's wrong to do so given the current state of copyright law. Also, the Supreme Court has already made it clear that copyright infringement is not theft:

The phonorecords in question were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" for purposes of [section] 2314. The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

Re:A better video

[FrostedWheat]

Nothing to do with the BBC. It's on Channel 4.
The only good program on the entire channel ;-)

Re:BILLY MAYS HERE...

[Sobrique]

Even if there were a crime committed, it wouldn't be 'theft'. (Adultery also, isn't illegal in a lot of places)

Re:BILLY MAYS HERE...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they live in Michigan ?

Re:BILLY MAYS HERE...

[TrekkieGod]

That was literally my first thought when I saw this, but I checked out other videos by that YouTube user and it looks totally legit. If this is a joke, they went a long way.

They went a long way. If you go to their user page, you can see that the user joined youtube on April 1st this year. I guess they liked the joke too much to let it go after april fools.

Weird Al did it first

[scharkalvin]

The description of the video sounds like Weird Al's "Don't download this song" video.

Re:BILLY MAYS HERE...

[tbannist]

Well, they actually did that PSA.

The only problems were:
A) They hired an actor to pretend to be a set builder.
B) He was griping that he "only" worked 8 months a year.
C) He was griping that he "only" earned $88,000 USD a year.
D) He accused everyone watching the movie of being thieves.

We talked to a local movie theater owner and politely explained that the anti-piracy advertisement was insulting his customers and making them feel unwelcome in his theater. We also mentioned that the message that his customer's hard earned money (most of whom make less in a year than the fake set builder makes in 8 months) should go to pay a relatively well off guy living in California to work less and earn more than them was not going to be received the way it was intended. Lastly we pointed out that the people in the theater have already *paid* for their ticket, if they were going to steal the movie they'd be at home in front of their computers and never see the PSA. Since that chat, I haven't seen that PSA or any other anti-piracy PSAs in theaters around here.

Re:Scare tatics

[DavidTC]

How on earth does 'addictive' mean 'dangerous'?

Heroin is, indeed, a very addictive drug. Not just 'mentally' addictive, but your body very rapidly becomes dependent on it and you will die if cut off from it rapidly. (Not 'may die'...'will die'.)

That said, when steadily supplied at invariant quantities, it is entirely, 100%, safe to take your entire life.

When morphine was first introduced and used during the US civil war, a lot of soldiers got addicted to it. It was basically the only battlefield medicine. If you got injured, or even ill from disease, which was a good percentage of people, and didn't die, which was almost no one who was sick, you'd end up addicted to morphine.(Heroin turns into morphine when ingested.) And you'd stay addicted to it your entire life.

And that's not counting the patent medications and laudanum and paregoric which hooked a bunch of civilians.

Estimates of 200,000 addicts are probably too high, but quite a large number of people got addicted in the last half of the 1800s, and never really got unaddicted.

And this was in days where quality control was a lot looser, and yet most people managed to have absolutely no medical problems whatsoever from their morphine addiction.

In modern day, there's absolutely no reason to believe that someone could not stay addicted to morphine or heroin their entire life with no medical complications at all.