Don't Copy That Floppy! Gets a Sequel 523
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)."
Dangerous stuff (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:3, Informative)
A selection of U.S. companies from the SIIA Member Directory [siia.net]: 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 (Score:4, Informative)
"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. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where have I heard these scare tactics before? (Score:1, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org].
Re:Scare tatics (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:BILLY MAYS HERE... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d82Lq2rVB_4 [youtube.com]
Re:BILLY MAYS HERE... (Score:3, Informative)
Definition of Theft (Score:5, Informative)
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)
I certainly won't argue that piracy isn't a crime, but it definitely does NOT appear to be "theft"...
Re:A better video (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing to do with the BBC. It's on Channel 4. ;-)
The only good program on the entire channel
Re:BILLY MAYS HERE... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:BILLY MAYS HERE... (Score:1, Informative)
Maybe they live in Michigan [archive.org] ?
Re:BILLY MAYS HERE... (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
The description of the video sounds like Weird Al's "Don't download this song" video.
Re:BILLY MAYS HERE... (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:Definition of Theft (Score:3, Informative)
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.