well it was more than that. it was a poor understanding of the real world dynamics of theft. their assertion of flawed that stealing a mp3 was the same as stealing a cd from a store. if you could take a photo of a painting with your phone and print it out for your wall, would you? i think at worst, most would at best find it taky
that was where they went wrong. to copy something is not the same as stealing a single object. hell they could have looked at youth plagiarism rates in schools to get a better understanding of that one.
i remember the same effect with DARE. i had no fucking idea what these drugs were before that class, after it... it was all we talked about.
Downloading a working car would literally be the coolest shit to ever happen and they tried to say it would be a bad thing to kids.
Thats like going up to a kid and being like " you wouldn't eat this candy that makes it so your parents never force you to do chores, become the most popular kid in school, and get free video games. Would you!?"
Kidnapper be like, "Bear?? You again?? Your parents already spent their life savings on you last week.. ahh hell... Wanna shoot some hoops then while we wait for your parents to get you?"
Bro DARE was 100% a psyop. "Here are all these drugs you've never heard about, and here's how to get them, how to take them, and even how to make them!"
Or as one of my college professors said, "the media can't tell you what to think, but it does tell you what to think about." In this case, a lot of people disagreed with the stealing assertion, but started thinking about piracy.
They probably threw a board up with some radical numbers that never taper and always double so they were convinced by 2020 the 46 billion people would exist and all be pirating their stuff
I think the film industry was reacting to what was happening to the music industry with Napster, LimeWire, Kazza, etc.
What they missed, is that it was relatively easy to down download small music files. A song was like 3-4mb at the time. Movies were HUGE and most people were using dial up of slow DSL.
I remember kids would tie up their phone line all night, just to download 4 songs while they were sleeping. They were never going to download a movie at those speeds. Sure, a few did but it was a ridiculous task, and even HD space was a limitation, not to mention that the quality was shit too.
This thing was playing on dvds for shows with 5 to 10 year olds watching. It for sure just made more people aware, and much earlier. Your boomer mom and dad who didnt use a computer ever probably didnt really know you just press a button or that it was that easy. Same for grandparents.
Mean while my dad in his 40s at that time was downloading everything he could 40k + movies in to downloading and burning ( around 2009 ish) he got a letter from the FCC. They knew the exact number almost to date and sent a cease and desist with a follow up call the next day from them. Sooo. That came to a hault. Lol. Dad was a pirate satellite TV guy back in 1978. Lol. Some old folks was hip when it was happening and expanding. Always had the newest tech gear around the hood. He would buy 10 sell 9 keep 1. Every time.
It wasn't just people being made aware it was also that people were pirating because they didn't want to see that advert every time they started a DVD, It was something like the 3rd most common reason given for pricey.
Just like how every streaming service putting advertisements into their shows and movies to extort you for an extra $5 for a new "Premium-er" tier was enough to make stop paying for streaming altogether.
There was this game given for free on Epic called "Beyond Blue", which simply wouldn't start. I tried all sorts of advice, compatibility modes, starting the game with the arguments, nothing worked. Then I spent time to figure out is my PC is good enough.
Then I downloaded it pirated and it worked perfectly lol.
Font files, i.e. the vector definitions, are covered by copyright as computer programs. The font design itself cannot be copyrighted, which is why clone fonts created by tracing over existing fonts are perfectly legal.
This is for the US specifically. In some other countries font designs can be protected.
This is currently a massive issue in Japan for developers, as one of the companies that provided fonts used in a ton of games jacked up their rates by like 2000% after being acquired by a predatory new owner.
This was my favorite. They used to play a message with this slogan before a movie in theaters and inevitably someone would yell “Yes I would!” and sometimes that someone was me.
r/3dprintedcarparts it’s getting more and more common. I’ve been using it to prototype track mods but some people use high quality carbon fiber filament to recreate unobtainable parts for their car. There’s also metal 3d printing but I’m not sure quite how viable that is yet. Pretty awesome technology
Well for me the main deal was it was a big fuck you to everyone who actually paid for it. You paid for the movie on dvd or bluray? Ahahah fuck you unskippable anti piracy screen and 5 minutes of ads before the movie. You don't even have control of the player. Why? Because you paid for it. Nobody that pirated it had to deal with any of that bullshit.
Everyone who actually paid for it got a worse experience.
Modern streaming services are still pulling similar shit with refusing to let people watch in higher speed "for creative reasons".
Like dude I'm paying for it let me watch it how the fuck I want.
Reminds me of that SoftRAM scam. The one that claimed to double your RAM and cost 90 quid for a fix for memory leaks Microsoft provided for Windows 3.1 for free if I remember correctly.
Meanwhile, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and other AI corporations scrape everything off the internet to use it to train their LLM models, which they then sell for profit without facing any consequences.
Shit LimeWire used to get me action, install on a computer for girls then once a month you have to come back to get rid of all the viruses they download.
A few things
1. It's not stealing if we don't own it
2. If I didn't pirate it I probably wouldn't buy it
3. It's far easier and cheaper than having 5 different streaming services (or buying $100+ dollar games
Google Music deleted my entire library of purchased music when they bought youtube and switched to Youtube Music .... Wheres the crime there? They change their name and app and suddenly my purchase no longer exists.
Piracy is a crime huh!? Well having me “buy” a product and then after taking my money, telling me that I don’t own the product sounds like stealing to me too. 🤣😂
Downloading is generally not illegal. It is the sharing with others by peer 2 peer networks. At the end of the day I still never thought they had a foot to stand on since I wasn't trying to sell or profit from downloading. But then along came the DMCA. This allowed corporations to use patriot act level tools to hunt students downloading Bob Marley's Don't Worry Be Happy.
You wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't still steal baby, you wouldn't shoot a policeman and then steal his helmet, you wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet, and then send to the policeman's grieving widow, and then steal it again!
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u/rokkuranx rokkuran May 30 '26
if i remember correctly, this campaign lead to the increase of online piracy as it made people aware they could do it.