Digital Piracy Is Evil: Difference between revisions

[[File:commiedl.png|link=Propaganda Machine|frame|Only the RIAA total surveillance can stop this [[Hypocritical Humor|totalitarian]] horror!]]

 

 

If you're watching television, it doesn't matter if the characters are drug-smuggling, whore-mongering, granny-beating, world-destroying murderers: the illegal downloading of movies and music [[Even Evil Has Standards|is guaranteed to morally offend them]]. Any good character who doesn't fall in with this philosophy will [[An Aesop|learn his lesson]] by the end of the episode. Expect physical theft to be used as a comparison and/or a plot point. That said, both sides of the debate are rife with [[The War On Straw|inaccuracies and strawman statements]]. There are much more nuances to the matter and to the sides than often given credit for.

Most videos these days have the now-standard Interpol Notice, many DVD's also include a [[PSA]] in the beginning about how piracy is wrong. In the most extreme cases, this segment can't be skipped...sometimes the disc can't even be stopped while it's playing. Ironically, the person who's logically most likely to see it is someone who legally paid to own a copy.

 

 

See also [[New Media Are Evil]], [[Even Evil Has Standards]], [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?]], [[Copy Protection]]. See [[Digital Distribution]] for a form of media which can be tarred with the same brush. Similar arguments are occasionally made against [[Fanfic]] by authors, complete with the analogy to stealing cars. Also, see [[Internet Counterattack]] for one example of what happens when the pirates throw tantrums, as well as [[Flame War]] for what happens when pirates and anti-pirates collide online.

For the polar opposite, see [[Digital Piracy Is Okay]].

 

 

{{examples}}

* "''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU Piracy: It's A Crime]''" commercials. Typically these are fairly easy to swallow, as far as a moral lesson.

** Even more ironically, this very commercial was sued for using unpermitted music from Dutch composer Melchior Rietveldt.

** Another Chinese anti-piracy ad from Hong Kong that has people saying "Thank you!" is a great example. The message at the end is so hilarious. This message says "[[Sarcasm Mode|The crime world thanks you! Without your help, how can piracy be so profitable?]] Keep away from pirated goods. Don't fiance crime!" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ur_uLazgM8 Watch it here!]

* One infamous advert on old FOX VHS tapes proclaimed, without a shred of irony, that video piracy funds international terrorism. Yes, that's right. If you bought a pirate video, then the Twin Towers was ''your fault''.

* Beware of Illegal Videocassettes and Pirate Videos, Daylight Robbery are just a few examples of these ads in the UK, along with the above example. The "piracy funds terrorism" ad appeared on VHS tapes from other companies, such as the UK release of Disney's [[Snow Dogs]].

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2HsyD4FJHQ Jackie (Chan) and I are on a mission to stop piracy.]

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plrcDeDa7LQ Here's a funny software Anti-Piracy ad featuring Mario!]

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FNqBZ9n-A8 Here's an Australian ad, Have You Got What You Paid For?]

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmLPvMlKNBU Used in the beginning of this video, The DVD Pirate.]

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6xj4jS8cho They brought it. He's gonna steal it!]

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Parodied in a live-action promo for the English release of ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'': Haruhi tells the viewers that downloading fansubs via BitTorrent is bad (especially odd considering Haruhi's usual attitude towards rules), immediately followed by a flashing sign saying "THIS EPISODE NOW AVAILABLE VIA BITTORRENT". At the end of this and all the other promos, the credits take a more reasonable stance: thanking fansub watchers that buy the DVDs after they come out and condemning those that do not.

* In the DVD version of ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' the FBI Warning at the beginning is parodied with a warning from ACROSS and threatens pirates with a punishment involving tar-and-feathering and a [[Noodle Implements|depraved walrus]]. This warning had its formatting altered for its release in other regions to make it resemble the warnings found on DVDs in those regions as well.

* The American release of the ''[[Chobits]]'' manga clothes its end-of-volume teasers as conversations between characters in the story, and in one makes sure to take a dig at "fan-scans". "No, I ''bought'' [[Fictional Document|that book you mentioned]] and didn't click your immoral internet link..."

* In the last episode of ''[[Battle Programmer Shirase]]'', the narrator thanks the viewers of Japan and the viewers overseas who were illegally downloading the show.

* In episode four of ''[[Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel]]'', a group of small time thugs that got away from the titular magical girls team up. They include a costume fetishist, a burglar, a marriage swindler, and an uploader of illegal videos, presented as a fat [[Otaku]]. The Angels consider him as bad as the other three.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* The Swedish version of the [[Donald Duck]] magazine [http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/07/28/Donald-Duck-comic-stirs-piracy-controversy/UPI-55081248811909/ ran a strip] in which Donald Duck starts a pirated CD business. He then is threatened with being sued by his uncle Scrooge, who (of course!) owns the record company, and ends up on his knees begging for forgiveness. Interestingly enough, the same story has Huey, Dewey and Louie download a song illegally and get away scot-free... then again, they're only downloading it to "sample" the CD and at the end of the story have bought it. And of course, unlike Donald, they're not actually burning and trying to sell pirated CDs.

* Played for laughs in an issue of ''Spider-Man Unlimited''. A former [[Harmless Villain|supervillain]] thinks that as part of [[Heel Face Turn]] he must "to make amends" by helping Spidey fight crime. Spider-Man decides [[Stop Helping Me!|to find some small-time heist the guy can help him stop]].

* In the [[Darkwing Duck]] comic, Honker is arrested for downloading music, though the event is treated as a part of St. Canard's slide into an over-litigious laws-enforced-by-robots dystopia.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Both played straight and parodied in the intro for the ''Film Cow Master Collection'' DVD (from the guy who did ''[[Charlie the Unicorn]]''). Disguised as an unskippable video on why piracy is wrong, it's actually non-sensical (and entirely skippable).

* In the ''Dante's Inferno'' puppet movie, there is a scene in which a Judge in Hell is sentencing sinners to their respective places in Hell. The first soul that comes up says he is there for downloading [[Metallica]]. The Judge sentences him to circle 7, level 1 of Hell for that.

* One of the sketches in ''[[Amazon Women on the Moon]]'' is "Video Pirates": a stereotypical pirate ship captures a prize and in the captain's cabin discovers a treasure... of videotapes. They throw one in the VCR and see the standard FBI warning, causing the captain to go "Oooo, I'm ''so'' scared!" and the crew to break into hysterical laughter.

* In ''[[Gym Teacher: The Movie]]'', a teacher tries to get rid of a troublesome student by planting enough pirated DVDs in his locker -- "[[G-Rated Drug|to prove intent to sell]]".

* A bit of a twist on the ''[[Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog]]'' DVD: the FBI warning changes to reveal a warning from the Evil League of Evil itself, only allowing ''evil'' use of the DVD.

'''Jeff:''' Just one song. And a little louder, please, so the authorities know! }}

** Porn producers have an advantage in that some of their material can embarrass even the most brazen pirate. Some companies concentrate their copyright-infringement efforts on their kinkiest products in order to maximize the potential embarrassment of fighting them in court.

* Pre-internet example: In ''[[Night of the Comet]]'', the biggest [[Jerkass]] is a movie-theater manager who covertly loans movie reels to an accomplice overnight so they can be copied, then sells the bootlegs. He becomes an [[Asshole Victim]] pretty quickly.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* [[Peter F. Hamilton]]'s ''[[Misspent Youth]]'' features some rather ham-handed antipiracy propaganda, assuming a future where the authorities stopped caring about copyright in 2010, at which point all art turned to crap. We see later in the ''[[Commonwealth Saga]]'' that the world has evolved into an almost-utopia nonetheless (which, this being Hamilton, [[Horde of Alien Locusts|doesn't last]]) leaving us [[Broken Aesop|confused as to Hamilton's actual message.]] Especially as fans, and Hamilton himself, consider ''Misspent Youth'' one of his weaker works.

** It is likely that instead of trying to convey a message Hamilton was simply trying to extrapolate what he thought was likely to happen to media from technological trends. This is how he comes up with most of the social and technological developments in his books.

* In one of the [[In Name Only]] [[Tom Clancy]] series (probably ''Net Force''), they [[Author Filibuster|stop the action so that two characters can debate digital piracy]]. However, since the Anti-Piracy advocate is the dashing latern-jawed hero, and the Pro-Piracy advocate is his 15 year old son, we are invited to shake our heads at the kid's "naive" arguments.

* ''[[Hyperion]]'' by Dan Simmons has the poet Martin Silenus thrust into massive debt when his second book bombs horribly. It's actually quite popular amongst the AI, but only one of them actually bought a copy; that AI then transmitted the contents to every other AI in existence. "Interstellar copyright doesn't mean shit when you're dealing with silicon."

* One story from the collection All Hell Breaking Loose featured a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|recording executive]] making a deal with the devil that allowed Satan to steal the souls of anyone who illegally downloaded music.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* ''[[The IT Crowd]]'' has [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg a parody] of one of the more annoying anti-piracy trailers.

* An episode of the family sitcom series ''Smart Guy'' started out with this Aesop with the main character buying pirated games from a person he met online. Said character immediately [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|jumps off the slippery slope]] by revealing he only pirates games so he can seduce little boys. The moral? Either "People who pirate software are pedophiles" or perhaps "if you pirate software, a 30-year old man will try to rape you."

* One might think this is an entirely modern trope, but one episode of ''[[What's Happening]]'' shows concert bootleggers (Way back before the music industry tried to conflate copyright infringement with privateering, they used to try to conflate it with alcohol smuggling) as a gang of murderous thugs.

* An ad campaign in the UK called "Knock-Off Nigel" is being used in an attempt to actually create and promote a stigma to buying pirate DVDs and downloading movies. The titular Nigel is accosted in one advert by a singing old man who talks about his "shady" dealings, prompting the entire pub he is in to start singing along. The second advert involves the same thing, except he's now in an office and his workmates are doing it instead. The ad campaign tries to put across the idea that people who download or pirate films steal from their grandmother's purse and give their girlfriends gifts they find lying on the street. These ads wind up making Nigel [[Unintentionally Sympathetic]], since it simply appears that he's getting assaulted by these irritating, high-and-mighty gits.

* ''[[The Young Ones]]'' used this trope in regards to TV license evasion, by having Vyvyan {{spoiler|eat the evidence.}}

* On ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'', Liz listed the things "I don't do", which included "I don't download music without paying for it".

* Was inverted in an episode of ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' when some criminals captured someone who sold illegal DVDs. They made the man stand on top of a stack of the pirated DVDs with a noose around his neck, and alternated pulling them out from under his feet until he strangled.

* When stealing files from a villain in ''[[Burn Notice]]'' Michael Weston's scene narration explains the easiest way to get files out of a guarded building is to put them on the internet via a free filehost. The downside being the files would be accessible to anyone online, but most of them don't care as they're only on it looking for the latest music CD making this a pretty safe way to go about it. It's hard to tell if this is for or against file sharing, but given how many [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|other blatantly illegal things Michael does...]]

* An episode of ''[[Seinfeld]]'' had Kramer convince Jerry to get an illegal cable hookup. Jerry subsequently has a dream where he's busted, and is shot hundreds of times while trying to make a run for it, dying in Kramer's arms.

 

== [[Music]] ==

* The [[Mastodon]] song that played at the beginning of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]] Colon Movie Film For Theaters'' was a [[Refuge in Audacity]] parody of this: "If I see you videotaping this movie, Satan will rain down your throat with hot acid and dissolve your testicles and turn your guts into snakes! This is a copyrighted movie for Time Warner. If I find that you've sold it on eBay, I will break into your house and tear your wife IN HALF!!!!"

** More amusingly, that youtube video is not available in the UK... due to copyright reasons.

* Comedy writer and actor Adam Buxton created [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xLZpxVI7Pa8 a song], using bits of music from a bombastic piracy ad (the same one parodied in the above ''[[The IT Crowd]]'' example) that depicts "the mind of a pirate", who makes ridiculously evil statements about buying knock-off DVDs and downloading music. Interludes in the music involve [[Take That]] after [[Take That]] aimed at the entertainment industry and "artists" who are only interested in making music and movies for money.

* Parodied by The Lancashire Hotpots in "Deirdre".

* [[Current 93]] played this trope totally straight when they sent out promos of their latest album to reviewers, with an added notice at the beginning spoken by a [[Creepy Child|little girl]]: "[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/oct/15/illegal-file-sharing-promo-copies This is a promotional CD. Anyone illegally selling, copying, uploading or downloading this material is condemned to eternal hellfire. Happy listening, God is love.]" It was creepy enough to make some people think twice about ripping the promos and putting them up for download before the album came out. From that same article:

* Princess F - "Internet Kills The Eurobeat Stars", on ''Super Eurobeat vol 202''.

* The original warning on [[My Chemical Romance]]'s "I Brought You My Bullets..." threatened to have Gerard come to your house and suck your blood for making illegal copies of the album. Which is [[Fetish Fuel|not exactly a deterrent for some]]...

* A [[Take That]]: Doc (Finland) released a single "[http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/41566 Pirate Bay]" containing samples cut from audio material from the Pirate Bay trial, with a comment: "for years Pirate Bay has served netlabel Musictrade as a great global distribution platform" (he's on Musictrade). Now with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hx9HKZBXiQ video]. Also releasing it on torrents, of course.

* Noel Gallagher hasn't expressed much criticism on piracy, but after [[Oasis]]' ''Heathen Chemistry'' was leaked, he introduced a song with "[http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1453651/20020429/oasis.jhtml off our new album, you thieving bastards]". Proving his point right, the audience sung along to all the new songs (making him say at the end of the concert "thank you all for coming, and for stealing the fucking album").

FBI warnin'? Huh, don't mean nothin. }}

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* In a ''[[Yenny]]'' story arc, the title character goes to see the first ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' movie at a theater, but her lizard, Zacha, takes a camera with her to record the movie off the screen and sell pirated DVDs of it, much to Yenny's annoyance.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The ''Tales of'' series has recently started adding anti-piracy messages to the start of their games; when the game is booted up, a character will come on screen and talk about they're relying on the player to keep the industry alive, et al.

* SNK made a knowing wink to their own piracy problems (from Chinese bootleggers, primarily) in ''Neo Geo Battle Coliseum'', where the evil organization hosting the tournament is called WAREZ.

* Parodied in ''[[Iji]]'' where the [[Fun with Acronyms|Komoto Imperial Weapons Industry]] claim that pirating weapons by combining two other nanotechnology weapons through cracking instead of paying their exorbitant prices is akin to high treason.

** Three crackers find ways to circumvent weaponry DRM, and have the bright idea of ''publishing them''. Guess what happens when the crazy alien with a stolen nanogun finds them?

* Oddly subverted in the Scholastic ''Microzine'' video game ''Pirates of the Soft Seas.'' The player is welcomed into a software pirate crew and seeks to help them steal video games. What's really strange is that this involves ''physically stealing computer discs,'' which would typically be considered a much worse crime.

* ''[[Spyro the Dragon|Spyro: Year of the Dragon]]'', if you are playing a cracked copy, has Zoe the Fairy appearing at the latter part of Sunrise Spring telling you that [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZnCcOe59CY your copy is hacked and may be an illegal copy, which will lead you to experience "problems" you would not experience on a legal copy].

* In the DOS days, id Software used to have some very creative anti-piracy messages on their exit screens. For ''[[Doom]]'', the message read like this:

* In ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'', the main character encounters a seer early in the game and can ask her questions, which she answers vaguely and cryptically. But if asked "Will I win in the end" she replies something [[Wiki Magic|along the lines of]] "It doesn't matter if you win or lose the game, the important thing is if you've bought it."

* ''[[Neptunia]]'' has [[Nintendo DS]] flashcarts (and Custom Firmware) as the [[Big Bad]].

* Not so much evil, but in ''[[No More Heroes]]'', Diane from Beef Head Video Store calls Travis at the beginning of every new assassination chapter to remind him to return one of the various pornos he rented. In one call, she kindly tells Travis that one of the videos he returned to the store was a copy of one of their videos (he kept the real one). The recording ends a short while into the video. Diane asks Travis to ''please'' return the original copy.

* The cells in the police station in ''[[Police Quest]] I'' hold a great big [[Scary Black Man]]. His crime? Video game piracy, naturally.

* Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games features a mission where you raid a shack of armed software pirates, recovering the master CD of the game you are playing.

 

** The information in that strip regarding iTunes having DRM protection on its songs is outdated, as acknowledged by a [http://xkcd.com/546/ later strip].

*** Only because DRM-free music is the norm. The original strip still applies to music that does have DRM, and perhaps more importantly, to most computer games and other software on the market today.

* Justified in ''[[Mac Hall]]''. [http://machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-15 A] [http://www.machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-21 three] [http://www.machall.com/view.php?date=2002-08-30 strip] arc, which points out that while anti-piracy measures may be inconvenient, all the blather pirates throw around doesn't change the fact that they'll pirate from ''anyone'', bad DRM or not. The strip was done in 2002, and still remains relevant.

'''Shadehawk''': Well, it's not MPAA: ''they can't fly''. }}

* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' seems to hold this view, evidenced [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/ here] and [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/29/ here]. Unusually, they lampoon the makers of DRM as well as the pirates, something the usual designers of stealth [[Public Service Announcement|PSAs]] rarely do.

* Parodied in [http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/042406/ this] ''[[Toothpaste For Dinner]]'' comic.

 

== Web Media ==

* Remember those ''D&D'' scare comics? [http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/nonprofit-distr.html They're trying to do it again.]

** Oddly enough, the comic has a B-plot about the main character's grandmother trying to fight the city's using eminent domain to evict her from her house, albeit with (in her view, inadequate) compensation- the city technically wins but can't pay the revised total. It's apparently supposed to be analogous to the downloading story, possibly in applying moral equivalence between what the sympathetically portrayed homeowners are doing and the record companies, but it ends up not making much sense in context because of the [[Dissimile|dissimilar situations]].

* ''[[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC|I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC]]'' addresses this in "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTokEDMaDWY Public Service Announcement]", where the casts of ''Watchmen'' and ''X-Men'' encourage viewers not to pirate ''X-Men Origins'', on the grounds that 1. It hurts the ordinary people who work in the entertainment industry well before it does anything to the big, fat, well-publicized millionaires, and 2. In the meantime, the sales lost on ''Wolverine'' [[Spoof Aesop|will give the edge to a bad chick flick]].

'''Wolverine''': You sure you want that on your conscience? }}

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2tlHq7frRU This] parody by [http://www.hearseclub.com/SORPFILMS3/SORP_FILMS_HOME_3.htm SORP Films] (Warning: NSFW)

* [[Riff Trax]] averts it with a donation page that can basically be summed up as "we know you've probably at least had the opportunity to grab our stuff without paying -- it's the Internet, these things happen, toss us a few bucks here and we'll call it even".

* [http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/147/ This anti-downloading PSA] from Ebaumsworld uses footage from [[An American Werewolf in London]]

* ''[[Mr. Coat and Friends]]'' spoofed this at [http://thatfellowinthecoat.com/vaultingtinytoons.php the end of this video].

* Inverted in episode 50 of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'', where Joey defends the series in court against charges of copyright infringement brought by the [[4Kids! Entertainment]] legal department.

* [[YouTube]]'s video about Copyright Infringement, starring none other than [[Happy Tree Friends|Russell]]!: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InzDjH1-9Ns&feature=relmfu\]

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** In a bit of a more ''old-fashioned'' version of this trope, in "Hell is Other Robots", one of the sins Bender is being punished for in Robot Hell is selling bootlegs. Note that cheating others and forging IOUs (both forms of stealing) is level two of Hell whereas piracy (another form of stealing) is level five. And, to add salt to the wound, he's punished by the artists he bootlegged in the first place: the Beastie Boys.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWPfcEOr2Yg Spoofed] with the [[Fun with Acronyms|Downloading Often Is Terrible]] extra on the ''Bender's Game'' DVD, which parodies that "You wouldn't do crime X" ad by having [[Jerkass|Bender]] reply that he ''would'' do those things.

** Also, "A Clone of My Own" features the opening subtitle, ''"Coming Soon To An Illegal DVD"''.

* That really weird [[Anvilicious]] episode of ''[[The Proud Family]]''. Penny meets a mysterious, [[The Matrix]]-like stranger who turns her ridiculously old computer that can only play Pong into some kind of super computer by... moving some stuff around. Yeah. Then he shows her THE INTERNET and the magical stash of ''evil'' illegal music it contains. Soon, the whole world knows about it and the music companies don't make any money anymore. It also compared downloading music to ''using drugs''. Then, the police ''surround her house'' and they show a musician who has actually gone broke because of piracy. Penny tells the Matrix-kid to bugger off and then this makes everything all right. The episode ends with no conclusion other than Penny putting on a pair of sunglasses and flying out the window. This episode can perhaps be described like the ''[[South Park]]'' example listed above, except played ''completely straight''.

* The [[Couch Gag]] from ''[[The Simpsons]] Movie'', where Bart was writing on the blackboard ''"I will not illegally download this movie"''. Though it's less of a condemnation and more of an utterly hilarious in-joke if you just illegally downloaded the movie.

** Not exactly digital piracy in the sense of downloading movies/music, but when Homer got stolen cable (cable, now, being digital for many North Americans, though arguably not at the time), this trope is played remarkably straight. Even the guy who hooks up the cable is later shown to be stealing car stereos and breaking into houses. Homer, who's shown to have stolen from Moe's and work and is an unabashed alcoholic and [[Jerkass]], comes to view this as a kind of [[Even Evil Has Standards|evil even]] ''[[Even Evil Has Standards|he]]'' [[Even Evil Has Standards|can't support]].

*** Because Dethklok sales are so vital to the world economy, the UN allows them to carry this on.

* An episode of ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' dealt with it in an almost-[[Broken Aesop]]. The episode was mostly about illegal street-racing, that Sari and Bumblebee would watch on bootleg cable, a subplot that felt like an afterthought compared to the rest of the episode. Once the street racing was dealt with, Bumblebee decided to cut their cable to "Set an example" for Sari. Okay, not only did the whole piracy issue feel tacked onto the otherwise perfectly-fine street racing plot, but how did the Transformers have such a full grasp of the concept of piracy at a time when they were still getting a feel for Earth customs?

* Played with in the "Downloaded Music Awards" in one ''[[Kim Possible]]'' episode:

'''Musician #1:''' No, mate, no money does not rock. }}

* There was a [[Scooby Doo]] episode where the bad guys recorded songs from the radio, duplicated the tapes, and sold them by the tousands. This being Scooby Doo, one of them had to smuggle the tapes out of the studio (hidden in a cave), [[Scooby-Doo Hoax|dressed as a pterodactyl]].

* [[My Dad the Rock Star]] had an episode where some music pirates recruited Buzz to steal a copy of Rock's latest song. Willy and his friends replaced it with a song Rock's fans didn't like.

* ''[[The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat]]'' had an episode where Da King of another planet stole the Earth (he believed to have won the rights to it from gambling) for its "Felkron". When Felix confronted him for this, Da King showed a videotape to explain his reasons. The tape had a F.B.I. warning that illegal reproduction would result in ''"violent-type actions"''.

 

== Caricature ==

* "[http://caricatura.ru/parad/grinchenko/3695/ That's patented!]"; "[http://caricatura.ru/parad/grinchenko/3718/ With copyright in head]"; "[http://caricatura.ru/parad/grinchenko/3786/ The Patent]"; "[http://caricatura.ru/parad/korsun/3921/ Attack]" (text:"How do you think -- are our disks licensed?"); "[http://caricatura.ru/parad/dubinin/3823/ Creative labour]" (text:"Let's use protection ?.."); "[http://caricatura.ru/black/korsun/457/ Civilized approach]" (text:"...we chose deliberate and civilized approach to the protection of copyrights"; the author's comment: made for a journal article about "anti-pirate campaign" which turned out to be part of war between traders in infringing copies).

 

== Other ==

** This article talks about anti-piracy tactics, which [http://www.cracked.com/article_20783_5-anti-piracy-strategies-that-screwed-over-regular-gamers.html often anger gamers].

* MC Double Def DP would like to remind you: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI Don't Copy That Floppy!]

** And, two decades later: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCyvw4w_yk&feature=related Don't Copy That 2!]

** ''[[Dead Kennedys|We]] [[Take That|left this side blank so you can help.]]''

** Needless to say, that slogan has been parodied enough to be approaching [[Dead Horse Trope]] status.

 

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{{reflist}}

[[Category:Index of Exact Trope Titles]]

[[Category:Evil Tropes]]

[[Category:Stock Aesops]]

[[Category:Discredited Trope]]

[[Category:Undead Horse Trope]]

[[Category:Plots]]