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" But deep in your heart you know the guilt would drive you mad
And the shame would leave a permanent scar
'Cause you start out stealing songs and then you're robbing liquor stores
And sellin' crack and runnin' over school kids with your car"
If you're watching television in the United States, it doesn't matter if the characters are drug-smuggling, whore-mongering, granny-beating, world-destroying murderers: the illegal downloading of movies and music is guaranteed to morally offend them. Any good character who doesn't fall in with this philosophy will Learn His Lesson by the end of the episode.
Taken to absurd extremes by some anti-piracy adverts as seen in cinemas and especially those put on to DVD releases. The pirates — or indeed, anyone who downloads movies or music — are portrayed as or compared to thugs or gangsters at best, or demonic creatures from the blackest pits of Hell at worst. These wouldn't be so bad, but sometimes you can't fast-forward these adverts (or even stop the DVD playing, with some of them), and are thus forced to watch passively while you are accused of being a murderous vampiric monster who probably eats newborn babies whilst downloading copyrighted information. You are being told this, it should be noted, on a product which you purchased legally - whereas illegal copies of that product likely have those messages removed ( Or So I Heard). The people behind these adverts apparently don't realize that one of the benefits of illegal downloading is that you wouldn't have to be insulted by these adverts when you watch it. This can be even worse with Video Games - while with movies you only have to survive a few seconds of an anti-piracy clip, copy protection in video games can be quite painful - the need to have the CD/DVD in your drive all the time, some kinds of copy protection being a bit unhealthy for the OS, slowing down your computer and the game itself and of course not being able to backup the game in case your disc gets damaged and lately being limited in the number of installations (what the... ?) and the necessity to be connected to internet all the time. Of course, with a pirated copy, you evade all this and on top of that, you don't have to pay for it. Seems to me they're actively trying to lose all the customers (in fact, This Troper plays most of his (legally obtained) games with cracks to evade this).
Very often Anvilicious, with a strong tendency to produce Narm. Though some would argue it's justified. It is a crime after all.
Keep Circulating The Tapes and Abandonware are related concepts —- however, as regards to this trope they're usually ignored. This is because companies that are the "victims" of such piracy often give subtle "wink wink, nudge nudge" glances that they don't particularly care, or may even actively encourage it.
See also New Media Are Evil, Even Evil Has Standards, What Do You Mean Its Not Heinous, Copy Protection. See Digital Distribution for a form of media which can be tarred with the same brush.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Parodied in a live-action promo for the English release of Suzumiya Haruhi: 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.
- The producers of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu have openly acknowledged the fansubs as the entire reason that it was ever released internationally. They had not originally intended on releasing it outside of Japan because they considered it "too Japanese", and believed that non-Japanese "wouldn't get it" because of the cultural barrier. The sheer proliferation and popularity of fansubs changed their mind about its international appeal.
- Kadokawa which owns Haruhi is on the forefront of trying to figure out a way to continue to operate in the digital age, which has hit both sides of the pacific hard with a large decrease of anime being made. Anime News Network got an interview
 which was mostly about this problem.
- There was also a famous incident in which the Singaporean licensor of Hauhi used a fansub translation instead of doing their own.
- The North American DVDs of Full Metal Panic have the American voice actors threaten those who pirate with in-character dialog. Teletha promises to "Send a cruise missile down your chimney." The version read by Gauron has the same attitude as a Mafia heavy leaning on someone. The Japanese release had these as well, and they are included in the extras.
- In the DVD version of 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 depraved walrus. This warning was had its formatting altered for its release in other regions to make it resemble the warnings found on DVDs in those regions as well.
Comic Books
- The American comic book industry is currently in no financial position to alienate its very niche audience of readers by cracking down on piracy of scanned comic books. This has led to a few notable creator and industry reactions:
- Marvel Comics has launched its own subscription-based digital comics archive. It has its critics, but it's widely regarded as at least a step in the right direction.
- Dan Slott, Fan Favorite writer of She-Hulk once left a very polite comment on some She-Hulk torrents on Demonoid, reminding downloaders that if not enough paper copies are sold, the title could be canceled, so if they could just keep that in mind thanks.
- Warren Ellis, a self-described futurist, believes digital distribution is the future of the industry and won't bat an eye if you tell him personally that you have downloaded entire series of his.
- However, on his now-defunct "Engine" message board, Ellis once started a thread asking where people downloaded their comics. Soon, writer Brian Wood was on the scene criticizing Ellis for condoning piracy and scolding people who did so. The thread then devolved into a gridlocked back-and-forth between Wood and one comics reader living in Spain who maintained that his desire to read his comics in English the week they come out (rather than waiting months for Spanish translations) was at least somewhat justifiable; Wood vehemently disagreed.
- At the start of one issue of Ellis' Nextwave, there's a somewhat tongue-in-cheek bit which says "You have just bought a copy of NEXTWAVE (unless you stole it off the internet)"
- In PS238, Zodon makes passing reference to Herschel possessing illegal MP3s, dubbing him a "Relativist" after he's forced to move cables used for sharing said MP3s as punishment for inside-trading of stocks.
- Very recently, the LiveJournal group "scans_daily", a comic-book-centric community that offered looks at (illicit) scans of comics, usually accompanied with commentary about said comics and usually revealing plot twists , endings and generally showing the coolest and/or funniest part of the comic, was suspended for a Terms of Service violation. It began when writer Peter A David took exception to scans of one of his series being posted, whereupon he brought it to publisher Marvel's attention, who brought it to LJ's attention, who shut the place down. Unfortunately, the group has sprung up again on a different site, but its membership took a massive hit, so maybe they won't get as many books cancelled. We can only hope.
- An issue of She Hulk, surprisingly, featured a cyborg shoplifting. The New Warriors showed up to catch her but couldn't believe she had broke in just to steal music albums, telling her instead to download them (thus inverting the trope).
- In an issue of Runaways, Victor uses his neighbor's unsecured wifi and downloads some music, which somehow causes a plane to crash into the house and kill Old Lace. Cant Get Away With Nuthin doesn't begin to cover it...
- The Swedish version of the Donald Duck magazine recently ran a strip in which Donald Duck starts a pirated CD business. He then is threatened to be sued by his uncle Scrooge, who (of course!) owns the record company, and ends up on his knees begging for forgiveness.
Film
Literature
- Inverted in Born To Run by Mercedes Lackey, in which the villains are particularly proud of the unbreakable Copy Protection on their torture, paedophilia and snuff videos.
- 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, doesn't last) leaving us confused as to Hamilton's actual message. Especially as fans, and Hamilton himself, consider Misspent Youth one of his weaker works.
- Averted by the Baen Books Free Library, which is a site set up jointly by SF/fantasy writer Eric Flint and Baen Books Publishing to provide online copies of certain books free of charge. Both Flint and Mercedes Lackey, one of the other authors contributing books to the online Library, have actually noted a surge in sales of the titles available to read for free. In addition to the free library, the books you do buy have not a trace of the DRM on them that sites like Fictionwise have to labor under. Not to mention that they are in every format known to modern computers.
- Happily averted by Brandon Sanderson, author of Mistborn and Elantris: All his books are available for free in PDF on his site, the only caveats being a) you can't change it in any way, and b) you can't profit from the distribution.
- In one of the In Name Only Tom Clancy series (probably Net Force), they 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.
- Played all the way to its most horrible conclusion, in “Noir” by K.W. Jeter - which tells of a world in which (besides other implications of a society where free market capitalism holds absolute sway) there are police forces that hunt down copyright pirates, one memorable punishment for said pirates is having their spine & brain extracted from their bodies, then transformed into high-fidelity audio cables, in which the pirate/victim still lives, being tortured by every note/sound that passes through, essentially, their nerve system.
- In Robert A Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice, Gerald (Jerry) Farnsworth makes it a point to ask his daughter if she legally paid for a pornographic hologram. After finding out that, yes, of course she did (because she is a "good girl"), he mentions that he happens to already own a copy which could have borrowed from him.
Live Action TV
- The IT Crowd has a parody of one of the more annoying anti-piracy trailers.
- The piracy trailer mocked there is actually quite easy to bypass. It gives a Long List of countries on which you are theoretically supposed to select where you live; if you tell it that you're in a country that doesn't have a corresponding piracy warning on the DVD it just skips to the main menu.
- On some DVDs. Not all, unfortunately.
- 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 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 Whats 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.
- One good thing to come from this campaign is the DVD case insert thanking people for buying a legal DVD rather than telling people who've already bought it legally not to buy or download pirate copies. Immediately ruined when the DVD turns out to have one of those vicious scare ads on it anyway undermining the whole system. Makes you weep it honestly does.
- As several online and real-life pirates have adopted the moniker as a badge of honour, it's safe to say the campaign has backfired.
- The Daily Show has Jon Stewart advertise his show's full availability on Comedy Central's own website moments after referencing the Viacom lawsuit against You Tube, while The Colbert Report ends some episodes with an advertisement to "watch every clip ever!" online.
- Seen in a recent iCarly episode, when Spencer hooks up with one of Carly's teachers, Ms. Ackerman. She gives him a present of an mp3 player with 500 songs downloaded onto it from file-sharing website. Carly and her friends seem to have no problem with Ms. Ackerman's downloading activities, but once Ms. Ackerman becomes a crazy Sadist Teacher, the girls have no problem with using evidence of Ms. Ackerman's illegal downloads to get the FBI after her, as opposed to possibly just getting her fired by Reasonable Authority Figure Principal Franklin for being a crazy lady.
- The Young Ones used this trope in regards to TV license evasion, by having Vyvyan eat the evidence.
- Presented with a patient who has shoved an mp3 player up his ass, House plays this for humor when he passes the dirty work on to Dr. Cuddy — along with the message that the RIAA wants her to check for illegal downloads.
- Leverage: Hardison mentions having to route through three different satellites to get a decent signal and download the latest Doctor Who torrent — Parker turns on a lighter and says: "Hey... Illegal downloading is wrong." Then she sets fire to a wastebasket inside a small van. This is especially ironic because Parker is nothing if not a thief.
- On 30 Rock, Liz listed the things "I don't do", which included "I don't download music without paying for it".
- Seen It A Million Times to indicate that the fat, sweaty, messy, sexist, unappealing guy is a 1337 h4><><0r, someone will invariably mention his huge collection of illegally downloaded music, videos and/or porn.
Music
- The Ur-example, and one that has gone without mention on this page (likely because of its obviousness) for far too long: the Napster/Metallica debacle. In 2000, a demo of Metallica's song "I Disappear" showed up on the year-old Napster filesharing network; when Metallica found out that the song - and, indeed, most of its back catalog - was on the network, they became the public face of the RIAA's campaign to get the network shut down. Unfortunately for Metallica, this would end up biting them in the ass, as it would destroy their reputation in the eyes of their fans for years, and it would turn a lot of people against the RIAA and their associated record labels.
- Instead of taking Napster and trying to find a way to turn it into a new way of doing business (by finding a way to monetize it or use it as a promotional tool), the RIAA eventually shut it down, only to have more filesharing networks (and eventually BitTorrent) pop up in its place, further cementing P2P as the rule rather than the exception.
- Additionally, the labels wouldn't start trying to find a way to sell digital music until after Napster went away, and it took an outside party (Apple) to create a viable digitial music marketplace (the iTunes Store), since practically every label-created marketplace ended up failing miserably due to a poor selection of music, high prices, and incredibly restrictive DRM.
- The Napster situation led to "battle lines" within the record industry itself, with many artists siding with the RIAA against P2P filesharing. There were a handful of artists who recognized the usefulness of filesharing as a promotional tool, and came out as being on Napster's side (which likely pissed the RIAA off something fierce); in the decade since Napster's downfall, more and more artists have come out on the side of filesharing (as pointed out below).
- And why wouldn't musicians support filesharing? Their per unit profits are marginal, compared to the lion's share that the record labels take; unless they have substantial shares in the company they're getting screwed, and the pennies they lose aren't worth as much as the exposure they gain. Compare with the higher profit margin of doing live shows, which no bootleg is ever substitute for the experience of. Now if they can just rip Ticketmaster's nuts out, they might get their earning back from parasitic middlemen.
- The boilerplate piracy argument doesn't really hold true for independent and/or unrepresented artists, though. However, the statistics on their music getting stolen aren't clear, at least to This Troper. Heck, it seems like a lot of the data regarding the label/artist dynamic is still pretty unclear.
- 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!!!!"
- Parodied in Weird Al Yankovic's "Don't Download This Song". Which he made available for downloading for free off his Myspace page several weeks before the album came out, thus ensuring the only way to hear it initially was to download the song. The video which accompanies it is absolutely not to be missed... but how does one go about finding and watching a several-years-old music video?
- Amusingly, the version that's on MTV's music video site is actually edited to censor the names of the filesharing programs Al mentions in the song; the logic behind this was that if the video was to air on their network, MTV wouldn't want to be party to encouraging filesharing. (The video never aired on television, though — at least not on MTV.)
- This is more of a Did Not Do The Research chain-reaction. By the time that song was released, the services (and their protocols) named were already outdated. One might say that MTV was actually planning on doing their viewers a service - albiet not intentionally.
- Oh, and the song is freely downloadable from Weird Al's website, or at least was when the album came out. The man enjoys his meta-humor.
- More amusingly, that youtube video is not available in the UK... due to copyright reasons.
- Al himself doesn't really care if you download ANY of his songs these days... songs by other artists wrongly labeled as being by him, now that's a different story. Those infuriate him, especially if the song is way more vulgar than something he would normally write.
- There is an "FBI Warning" at the beginning of almost every commercial VHS tape warning about the penalties for copyright infringement. One video tape released by the Insane Clown Posse instead began with an "ICP Warning" that basically said that since they stole the contents themselves, they don't care if you copy the video and can't do anything about it if you did.
- Mike Doughty actively encourages his fans to illegally download his songs, since he, like most musicians, makes all his money off live gigs anyway.
- And Disturbed don't care that much, either.
- Ssh! Don't let that get out if you don't want RIAA goons at your door!
- Comedy writer and actor Adam Buxton created 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.
- As a counterexample, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has blasted his record company for inflating the price of CDs, claiming "as a reward for being a 'true fan' you get ripped off", and urging fans at a concert in Australia to "steal" his songs. Since then, he's left record labels and now acts as a free agent with an emphasis on digital distribution, putting out an album with a "pay-what-you-want" system (Ghosts I-IV), and one for free (The Slip).
- In the same breath, Reznor commented that it was ok to download his music because "He was rich" and then went on to say that it was his call, not the fans or the company, his, to make that offer. A lot of other artists are not in the position he is in and he asked that they be given the same curtesy
- It should also be noted that, while only the first nine tracks to the album (Ghosts I) were made available on the band's website at the time of the album's release, you can '''legally''' download the whole album for free. Ghosts I-IV is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, in effect allowing anyone to legally share the entire album without any repercussions, as well as allowing people to remix the album's content (so long as it's for a non-commercial use, credit is given to the original artist, and the remixes are placed under the same license as the original album).
- Reznor is actually an avowed pirate, being a member of former music torrenting site Oink.CD and actually said that labels could do better to actually try and match said sites.
- Another counterexample: Radiohead, who arguably broke the door for "legal" digital distribution. Their 2000 album, Kid A was available for streaming from their website before its official release, and their 2007 album In Rainbows was released for sale on a "pay-what-you-want" system, but they've since indicated that they will not pursue it further.
- Their 2001 album, Amnesiac was leaked by a third party before its release, which angered the band; however, they were not upset because of the download, but because they hadn't set the final mix yet.
- Radiohead also forced their American label, Capitol Records, to back down from lawsuit threats against fansites that posted Radiohead lyrics.
- Billy Bragg offered another counter example: side two of the cassette Life's A Riot With Spy vs Spy is blank, and labelled "Bootleg the Bragg. Confuse the enemy."
- The Dead Kennedys did the same thing on In God We Trust Inc.. "Home taping is killing big business. We left this side blank so you could help."
- Nerdcore hip hop artist MC Lars has a song entitled 'Download This Song' that is, more or less, a complaint against the monopoly of sorts of the record labels and urges the listener to download music as a means of breaking said monopoly.
- System Of A Down after one of their albums was leaked on the internet months before the release date under the name Toxicity II they changed the name to Steal This Album and changed the art to look like it was a burned CD with the title hastitly written in sharpie. They then said at several live shows that they do not care if fans download their songs so long as they wait until after the official release date.
- According to musician Amanda Palmer, "The fact that a couple of hundred thousand of people in America are listening to my record but only, like, whatever, about 25,000 have actually gone into a store and bought it, that’s awesome." In general, she encourages free downloading of her work and sees it as the future of music.
- There's also her infamous email where she claims she made $19,000 in 10 hours hawking merchandise via Twitter, but $0 from a month's CD sales of her major-label album.
- Jonathan Coulton's website actually says he doesn't mind if you "steal" his songs, and offers the chance to donate money "anyway".
- I'd hardly knew anybody who would avert this trope more epically than Show Of Hands, who outright sees a reliable fanbase in "pirates".
- Anybody remember Lars Ulrich, one of the more infamous straight examples? You would think he doesn't need to be listed as an example, but it's worth noting no less that the story has come full circle and Lars actually ended up downloading his own Death Magnetic album.
- Additionally, with many people complaining about production issues with the album's release, many have resorted to pirating recordings of the album's songs taken from Guitar Hero to have what they feel is a better-sounding version of the album.
- Counter-example: Kid Rock was once approached by his label to speak out against filesharers. He responded by refusing their request; in an interview, he stated that "I was telling kids - download it illegally, I don't care. I want you to hear my music so I can play live."
- On the other hand, he did make a PSA video mocking the Pirate attitude of "It's ok to pirate because they're rich."
- Kid Rock also appeared on an episode of CSI as himself, accused of murdering an underling that leaked his latest album to the Internet. He was innocent, and the murdered underling was acting under his orders.
- Sort-of counter-example: because of legal entanglements with his label, DJ Danger Mouse (the man behind the infamous Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up album The Grey Album) couldn't release his album Dark Night of the Soul. Well, to be specific, he couldn't release the music. So instead, he released the album — with full artwork — as a blank CD so that people who acquired the music from less-than-legal sources could burn the music to the CD.
- Green Day did something similar to this in 2004.
- In yet another instance of bands cheerfully acknowledging the existence of pirates in their fanbase The Matches played a gig in London shortly before the UK release of Decomposer and just before launching into the big singalong anthem (Salty Eyes) the singer said words to the effect of "We know the album's not out but I guess most of you have downloaded it already so you can join in this next one." He was perfectly correct.
- Upon finding out about the verdict of the recent Pirate Bay case, Machinae Supremacy posted a blog on their Myspace page showing their support for the website's ex-owners. Considering that the band got their original fanbase from their entirely digital free-to-download webography, this is hardly surprising.
- A semi-counterexample, when Animal Collective's album "Strawberry Jam" leaked and the band was asked about it, Panda Bear's response was: "The only thing we’re really upset about with the leak is that it’s only parts of it. I think there are six songs out there now. People aren’t even able to get the full experience of the album, which bums us all out quite a bit. So if you’re listening leakers, put up those other three songs, man, pronto."
- An amusing example is UK recording artist Lily Allen; in early September 2009, Allen lifted the contents of a blog entry about rapper 50 Cent's reaction to piracy from Techdirt (a well-known technology blog) in an attempt to denounce 50 Cent's stance and show she was all for having the controversial proposal to kick filesharers off the Internet based on an accusation rather than a conviction signed into European law. Since Techdirt is fine with people posting the text of their blog entries elsewhere, this wasn't much of an issue, but it made her look like a hypocrite for saying that people copying/downloading/pirating others' works without their permission is bad when she went and did the same thing. But then Techdirt's readers dug a little deeper and found out that the blog entry wasn't the end: in 2006, Allen had posted "mixtape" M P3s featuring other artists' music to her personal website in an effort to promote her own music, essentially doing the same thing she wanted people kicked off the Internet for. After these facts came to light, Allen shut down her blog, called off her appearance at a conference for musicians to come together and discuss filesharing/piracy (to "avoid the press"), and announced she was leaving the music industry to pursue an acting career.
- A rather well done response to Lily's arguements is contained here.
- Robin Pecknold, front-man to the music group Fleet Foxes, not only advocates file sharing but listened to most of his musical inspirations via Napster downloads.
- 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 little girl: "This is a promotional CD. Anyone illegally selling, copying, uploading or downloading this material is condemned to eternal hellfire. Happy listening, God is love." Even if you don't believe in hell 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:
"Illegal downloads are making it unfeasible for bands like Current 93, who put out their own material, to continue. One loses a little of your soul when you exploit someone in that way. Once your soul has gone, you are in hell."
- Harvey Danger ("Flagpole Sitta") offered their third album, Little By Little, as a free download. On their website, they explain that the CD "is a bet that the resources of the Internet can make possible a new way for musicians to find their audience – and forge a meaningful artistic career built on support from cooperative, not adversarial, relationships...[if] no one buys it, we’ll know our experiment was costly. But that won’t make it a failure." If only more artists were like these guys.
Video Games
- Ultima 7 Part 2: The Serpent Isle has, in addition to several of the regular kind, a nefarious Software Pirate.
- 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.
- In the P.R. arena: Many companies have blamed piracy for lack of sales on PC games. Whether this is true or not can set the internet aflame. The effect of this perception has led to numerous controversies over DRM schemes in PC games, neatly summed up in a three day Penny Arcade series that came to the conclusion that it was akin to an arms race between two factions in which the consumer is inevitably collateral damage.
- At one point in Pokémon Firered and Leafgreen, a sailor informs you - "By the way. Buy this game, or die." Of course, this only pops up if you're playing either an illegal ROM or you used a Gameshark to get a ticket that should only be available at a Nintendo event.
- Parodied in Iji where the 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.
- Well, let us put it this way: 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?
- Taking into note that they were cracking down on the crackers before the events of Iji, where the crazy alien with the stolen nanogun wasn't an issue so much. Furthermore, KIWI's prices for the cracked weapons were ridiculous; in one example, it'd be some 32 times cheaper to buy the two weapons needed as components and crack them than bying it from KIWI.
- 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 I would have considered a much worse crime.
- Ironclad/Stardock have gone on record in interviews stating that "illegal distribution" of their games is one of the ways they have been able to be successful without huge marketing campaigns, and that they cater to the players who do pay for the game and ignore piracy altogether. Their latest game, Sins Of A Solar Empire, was intentionally launched with minimal copy protection to make it easier to trade, with the idea that people who downloaded and enjoyed it would go ahead and buy it.
- Stardock's CEO was a little pissed off at the piracy of Demigod, though, because the game would automatically contact the servers on startup asking if there is a patch. This ended up clogging the servers for the first week or so making the game neigh-unplayable due the massive lag until all release-edition versions were all re-directed to their own stand-alone server.
- 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 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.
- This was one of the reasons Iron Lore claimed to have gone bankrupt. This time, piracy apparently did affect sales: the pirated versions for Titan Quest ended up crashing far more often than the retail versions, creating a LOT of such bug reports by people who hadn't actually bought the game, even before the game's release! The developers knew just what complaints to ignore - the crashes was actually the copy protection at work - but for places like online forums, where a lot of people play the game but won't admit to piracy, things got really out of hand. And since reviewers regularly check on forums for other people's opinions on games they're rating, just about all reviews had a "I didn't have any problems with bugs, but there were loads of complaints about crashing". One more Copy Protection-assisted financial suicide.
- Iron Lore? You mean the people behind Dawn Of War: Soulstorm? Trust me, piracy was the least of their worries.
- However, doing this same thing didn't seem to affect Rocksteady, the devs of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Near the release of the PC version of it, people logged onto the official forums to report a bug where Batman was unable to perform a move that is required to progress through the game. Said people were unpleasantly suprised to basically be told "That isn't a bug, its DRM. You're a pirate. Buy the game [expletive deleted].", which this troper found quite hilarious.
- Tarn Adams, the creator of Dwarf Fortress, is taking the NIN/Radiohead approach to game distribution - the game is freeware, and he actually quit his job to devote his time to the game, and survives on donations from fans.
- 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:
"If you haven't paid for DOOM, you are playing illegally. That means you owe us money. Of course, a guy like you probably owes a lot of people money—your friends, maybe even your parents. Stop being a freeloader and register DOOM. Call us now at 1-800-IDGAMES. We can help!"
- Game marketer Bruce Everiss' anti-piracy mentality is such that he attempted to revise history (becoming an Orwellian Editor in the process) so as to fit his current beliefs.
Web Media
- This fan-made parody using One Piece.
- Parodied in a recent viral video by Kid Rock, where he not only states that he's alright with fans downloading his music, but urges them to steal anything they want so as to "level the playing field".
- As one might expect given the nature of the series, this LG15: the resistance promo vid averts this.
- Remember those D&D scare comics? 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 dissimilar situations.
- This strip of xkcd explains how even if you do buy online music legally, you could still end up as much of a criminal as someone who pirated their music, thanks to the DMCA.
- The information in that strip regarding iTunes having DRM protection on its songs is outdated, as acknowledged by a later strip.
- UserFriendly inverts this trope on a regular basis, instead portraying the RIAA as an evil organization which employs inquisitors.
- In Yamara, Glathheld claimed skull as his trademark and made people pay for 'lease' — when he could. He forgot about... some entity with preferential right... No, not the Taxes. This turned out to be fatal miscalculation. Hilarity ensues.
- Parodied by For Tax Reason's Digital Pirates of Dark Water.
- Penny Arcade briefly covers the history of video game piracy in "The Origin Of The CD-Keys." As the third installment points out, the real loser in the arms race between publishers and pirates is the legitimate consumer.
- Slackerz parodied the "Don't copy that floppy!" ad to show us that when you copy a game, you destroy the universe.
- Dorm of the Undead, a new feature on Take180.com, has a guy download a movie illegally. The movie file contains a virus. The virus turns him into a ZOMBIE. And it's all brought to you by Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Which explains why the "About the Show" page begins with quotes like
Downloading fake movies may infect your computer with viruses that can be transmitted while you're downloading. Not only do you risk crashing your computer, but you also risk acquiring malicious spyware which will steal your personal information.
- Red Vs Blue averts this entirely as their episodes are available for all to see, entirely free on their website. Only a few can be shown daily, though that's due to space issues (but that's what youtube is for). Instead, the group make their money from sponsors and selling merchandise, such as t-shirts and full length DVDS.
- Also, in one PSA about going to the movies, after numerous tips on etiquette so you won't ruin the movie-going experience, Church states that he's going to record a movie in the theater, at which point Tucker strongly urges him to use digital for better quality.
Western Animation
- Futurama, "I Dated a Robot": Those who facilitate illegal downloads will also unleash killer Lucy Liu-bots to protect their sinister racket. Of course, in this case what's being downloaded illegally is personality imprints painfully derived from heads-in-jars being held prisoner for the purpose. Slightly different from a normal recording. Downloaded from Kidnappster.com!
- 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.
- Spoofed with the Downloading Often Is Terrible extra on the Bender's Game DVD, which parodies that "You wouldn't do crime X" ad by having Bender reply that he would do those things.
- Also, "A Clone of My Own" features the opening subtitle, "Coming Soon To An Illegal DVD".
- After Granddad forced Jasmine to accompany him and the boys while they sneak into the movies on The Boondocks, an ad that played before the movie compared digital piracy (and "stealing movies") to murder and featured a movie stuntman who said that it hurts when someone "steals all that work". Jasmine started crying, said "I'm sorry, Mr. Stuntman," and wanted to turn herself in to her father, the assistant district attorney. The actual episode ends with Huey saying they should have just downloaded the movie off the internet instead of sneaking into the theater.
- In another episode, Jasmine's dad Tom condemned his wife for downloading music not for any moral reason, but out of an irrational fear of being caught and sent to prison (and then being anally raped).
- The South Park parody has the kids download music from the Internet, but their house is then stormed by FBI agents as if they were Waco or something. Afterward, the lead FBI agent takes them around the houses of various musicians who, as a result of illegal downloading, are now forced to buy slightly less glamourous private jets (ones without a remote control for the surround sound plasma screen TV and DVD entertainment system), as if it were a Christmas episode and the villain was being shown all the orphanages that were suffering as a result of his stinginess.
- As a side note, Parker and Stone have personally stated they didn't give a crap if people downloaded episodes of South Park. Hell, the official website has every single episode, ever. (With commercials).
- They probably were told by Comedy Central to put up commercials, I doubt they would let them do it otherwise. Also, the commercials are really short and sometimes are actually parody commericials from South Park, like "It's Hard to Ride Bike!"
- That really bad, Anvilicious episode of The Proud Family (good luck finding it): Penny meets a mysterious, 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 she tells the Matrix-kid to bugger off and then this makes everything all right. This episode can perhaps be described like the South Park example listed above, except played completely straight.
- You forgot the part where they show a musician who has actually gone broke because of it. Apparently the money from live shows and royalties from companies using his music on TV, the movies, radio, etc. is chump change compared to that lucrative CD money.
- Not to mention that the episode ends no no conclusion other than Penny putting on a pair of sunglasses and FLYING OUT THE WINDOW.
- 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 Jerk Ass, comes to view this as a kind of evil even he can't support.
- Robot Chicken had an ending gag around this, where some text debunked an argument about the damage caused by downloading movies on the economy as a whole, then stated that TV Piracy on the other hand was destroying this great nation.
- Adult Swim itself has what is probably the best anti-piracy measure: A video section of their site that has full episodes to see on streaming video with ads. They show pretty much every Western Animation and Live Action TV show they have, and a regular supply of anime they put up. It only has two flaws: The only archive they have is one full of clips, not full episodes, and they seem to not air certain anime at all, including big-hitter Bleach, which is actually odd considering Viz has the license to Death Note, and that show was put online. And let's not get started on poor Moribito...
- Space Ghost Coast To Coast plays this for laughs at the beginning of Knifin' Around, with Space Ghost's failed attempt at copying a Radiohead CD. At worst, Thom Yorke was only amused at the sight of the supposed CD Burner blowing up.
- Dethklok visits a record store in the season three premiere of Metalocalypse, where the announcement is made that "This record store will be closing in five minutes. Forever. Because it's a record store. Enjoy illegally downloading all your music."
- The band also has their own method of fighting piracy. They send strike teams to kidnap anyone who has downloaded their songs. The downloads come with a warning, though.
Caricature
- "That's patented!"; "With copyright in head"; "The Patent"; "Attack" (text:"How do you think — are our disks licensed?"); "Creative labour" (If You Know What I Mean... text:"Let's use protection ?.."); "Civilized approach" (text:"...we chose deliberate and civilized approach to the protection of copyrights"; has author's comment: it was for journal article about "anti-pirate campaign" which turned out to be part of war between traders in infringing copies).
- Attempts to rhetorically equate copyright (let alone generic IP) infringement with robbery on the high seas obviously have to inspire some meta-humor. They do.
- Of course, The Onion. "Kid Rock Starves to Death: MP3 Piracy Blamed."
- One arc of the webcomic Help Desk followed a deal between the RIAA and Ubersoft, wherein pirates could confess their crimes and gain absolution in exchange for giving Ubersoft their personal data. And then one caller confesses to sinking ships. And then Ubersoft and the RIAA get sued by the seafaring Pirate's Union for dilution of their trademark.
Other/Uncategorized
- This is actually the modern manifestation of a classic tactic. The film and television industry reacted with violent hostility when VCR technology was introduced, claiming that if consumers were allowed to record whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, movies were inevitably doomed, and television wouldn't be far behind. Which, as we all know, is precisely what happened after the famous "Betamax lawsuit" was resolved in the VCR's favor. Jack Valenti, of the Motion Picture Association of America, actually referred to the VCR as "the Boston Strangler of the movie industry."
- And the record industry's reaction to cassette decks, before the VCR. A coalition of record labels trying to make the patching in of a radio to a hotel's PA system a criminal offense in the 30s. Sheet music publishers tried to make player piano rolls illegal before even that.
- Back in the '80s the British Phonograph Industry used to have a logo with a demonic audio cassette, and the slogan "Home Taping Is Killing Music (and it's illegal)". This was parodied with posters and T-shirts saying things like "Home Sewing Is Killing Fashion" (as seen in The IT Crowd). A more recent parody is the UK branch of the Pirate Party's slogan "Copyright Is Killing Music (and it's legal)".
- Testifying on the other hand was no less than Fred Rogers himself. Read the quote from him on the Wikipedia page and be in awe for just how great the man was.
- Brazilian DVDs first came with ads similar to the FBI ones announcing "buying pirate movies is stealing". But in 2007 (specially due to Tropa de Elite, released worldwide as The Elite Squad, becoming a huge hit before the theatrical release due to pirate copies of a leaked version) the focus was changed to "piracy finances organized crime". Organized crime has made money off street-DVD piracy, but they don't have a monopoly on it (and it doesn't stop people from just downloading it for free anyway!) Some DVDs come with three or more ads of this kind, and sometimes all of them play before the film starts...
- Which is hilarious because a download copy would have edited that out.
- This just sums up this whole trope (and what's wrong with it) better than anyone alive... provided you agree with him that digital piracy is equivalent to checking out a book from the library.
- Unfortunately (in the UK, and probably elsewhere too) authors receive a flat fee (5.98p at last count) when their books are borrowed from libraries. (Unfortunately for the analogy that is. Obviously it's not unfortunate for the author.)
- As the second and third photoshopped images of this page of the goons parodying anti-piracy posters notes, one of the most fundamental problems of such mindset is that not only it may show average people that such thing as piracy exists, but also accidentally encourage it as well.
- Don't Copy That Floppy!
- What Madonna thinks about digital pirates.
- Sometimes, even certain torrent trackers get upset when someone "pirates" their allready "pirated" stuff. It's either sheer irony, or maybe a completely different trope.
- That is actually Uwe Boll's excuse for not even bothering to try — among other things — to make faithful video game adaptations.
"And to be honest, the real gamers are the typical download guys, right? They don't pay anything for movies, because they illegally download the movies * <Besides, what kind of real gamer would download an Uwe Boll movie?!> . So why I should please these guys? I need the normal audience".
- Of course, said videogamers would buy the films if they didn't just want to watch them out of Bile Fascination.
- Of course, said "normal audience" wouldn't watch those films anyway, as the only thing that would draw in anyone is the Brand Name Recognition.
- What would Uwe Boll know about a "normal audience" anyway? A "normal audience" is pure fantasy to directors, writers and producers who have sense. When you're talking about Uwe Boll, that can only be a deranged fantasy.
- There is an anti-piracy ad featuring The Wizard Of Oz characters. Putting the wizard in charge was probably not the wisest idea.
- There is a Casablanca themed anti-piracy ad in which Rick is shocked and offended by piracy. Anyone who has seen the film could tell you that the ad's writers did not actually see the film.
- Quite early in the main rulebook for Cthulhu Tech, it gives you a short "If You Downloaded This Book" lecture, saying, in short, "If you like it, buy it, otherwise we'll likely go out of business". Several sourcebooks later, this seems to have worked.
- Ironically, mainly bootlegged films still maintain the anti-piracy notice.
- Bethesda doesn't distribute CD keys with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, showing that they know exactly how "helpful" CD keys are.
- Unfortunately they were forced to in Fallout 3, however the copy protection only denies you running the Fallout Launcher, you can still launch the game from the game's directory.
- "Nothing good has ever come from the internet, period," according to Sony's CEO.
- Dungeons And Dragons overlords Wizards of the Coast sued several people who were illegally distributing electronic versions of their materials (aka PDFs) online. Then they took things a step further and punished their legitimate customers by telling everyone who legally sold the same PDFs to stop doing so, making it so that the only way to actually get the PDFs is to do it through less-than-legal means.
- Don't forget that they also pulled the products that were out of print, meaning that unless you can find an affordable used copy, now the only way to get them is illegally.
- A few other groups thought about this reasoning for a bit longer and realized that PDFs cost basically nothing to make in the first place (paper, glue and ink are more expensive than you think) so theft of causes much less of a hit to profits.
- White Wolf responded by making the Exalted core rulebook PDF free for a week.
- Copyfraud. "While falsely claiming copyright is technically a criminal offense under the Act, prosecutions are extremely rare." Guess what this leads to?.. Intellectual property laws being used for copyright theft.
- Some old advertisement examples can be found at http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/antipiracy.htm
- Addressed by Linkara on his brother's internet show DumpsterTech, in heavy detail. His take on the situation: Copy Protection is evil and actually increases piracy, and there are generally three types of pirate - those who are douches who refuse to pay for anything ever, those who want to avoid said Copy Protection but would still legally pay for the game if it wasn't there, and those who can't get the content otherwise (usually because of lack of distribution in their area) - and gaming and other companies should really only watch out for the first type while using the internet and file distribution to their advantage to cater to the other two types for more revenue.
- The subject apparently opens all batshit bomber bays wide: 'Slavery' and 'genocidal slaughter' cited in copyright case (The Register)
- The BBC has a "Watch/Listen Again" service whereby programmes they broadcast to which they own the copyright (i.e. not movies nor most stuff made for them by outside companies) can be downloaded for a certain time (usually 7 or 14 days) after broadcast. This is only supposed to be available to British residents, but others have found ways around this restriction.
- However, you can get BBC radio shows on Listen Again from anywhere in the world (with the exception of sport).
- Comedian Ross Noble will often work jokes into the copyright messages of his DV Ds. for example, in one an ordinary copyright message plays, followed by a second message chastising the viewer for ignoring it. In another, he provides a list of activities that the viewer can perform while waiting for the copyright message to play (the list spends longer being played than the copyright message itself).
- Generally speaking: smaller European countries are hotbeds for piracy, party due to the amount of red-tape vs. the amount of money they generate for companies. This makes the legal offerings very scarce despite having (in some cases) 95% of the people on very fast broadband. This doesn't stop them from shouting at the top of their lungs that the legal way is just as good.
- Example: Hungary was named as a hotbed several times. However, as of January 2010 downloading illegal material for personal use is considered fair use and as such, it's legal... until the ACTA treaty is ratified, that is. It extends the DMCA to all ratifiers including the EU and the ratification is highly possible as the US pressures everyone to comply so that it can be introduced in 2010. Though that's probably bad news to many, it's still better than the recent acceptance of the uber-strict HADOPI in France which goes so far as to punish copyright offenders with up to 300,000 euros and 3 years of prison aside from the up to one full year of complete internet ban if the offender is caught three times (the third instance has the option for appeal but it won't delay issuing the punishment and the victim has to prove his/her innocence which, needless to say, is all but impossible). Needless to say, it received wide condemnation from all across the internet with critics naming it the "digital guillotine". Allegedly the UK wants to introduce a similar system with the publishers expecting an additional 1.7 billion pound income from penalties in the first ten years. Even the dumbest of people can see that they ain't screwing around; on the other hand, the pirate community is already counterattacking with the formation of anti-copyright political parties worldwide (take a look at the father of all, the Swedish Piratpartiet: membership's in the fifty thousands and two seats in the European Parliament to boot).
- good to know: ACTA is very much hush-hush and it took a leak from the EU responce to the contents to notice what it's about for people who aren't members of the EU organisation. The gist of the response was: "well this model treaty is technically illegal in several EU countries", which will probably do nothing in the long run as France and the UK did ignore the EU High court ruling on the HADOPI as well.
- Then there's the Dutch comittee for safety and internet, which didn't invite consumer organisations like "bits of freedom" and has outright stated: "privacy on the net is not our priority". Which is great news for the ACTA.
- A good rule of thumb for how tolerant internet forums are of piracy is this: The higher-profile the forum, the less tolerant it is. On small forums with a few dozen people you can almost always get away with posting Youtube, Rapidshare, and torrent links like they were going out of style, while large forums will almost always have a strict rule against piracy in any form, to the point in some places where even mentioning Youtube is a serious offense. The reason for this is quite obvious, the higher profile the forum, the more likely it is to be patrolled by lawyers and companies seeking to enforce IP rights by suing the daylights out of the forum if it allows its users to engage in such illicit activity.
- An exception to the rule are the infamous large forums on the internet where "anything goes", including the major Imageboards.
- Good old Nabeshin has gotten into the anti-piracy campaign, too, though he's been a bit less Serious Business about it: in his American con appearances, he has implored his fans to buy the official DVDs. "Please, we need to eat!"
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