Basic Trope: The belief that piracy is evil and the attempt to spread this belief.
- Straight: The Record Industry of Tropes (RIT) makes warnings that say "Piracy is theft. Do not be a thief."
- Exaggerated:
- The RIT, explicitly and without a hint of irony, says that if you download one song, you're worse than Hitler.
- The RIT sends out ninjas, assassins, and hit men out to kill you if you pirate just one of their songs.
- Downplayed:
- The RIT says, "Please support our artists by purchasing our records legally."
- The RIT only tolerates piracy of albums that are out-of-print anyway.
- Justified:
- The RIT believes that piracy makes them lose a lot of money.
- The RIT is religious and believes that piracy is sinful.
- Inverted: Digital Piracy Is Okay.
- Subverted: In the warning, Bob says to Alice, "Did you pirate that album?!" in a shocked voice. A few seconds later, he says, "Actually, I don't care so much" calmly.
- Double Subverted: Then he adds, "But I think these guys care." Cue the entrance of police officers and Alice's arrest. Bob is fined for saying he didn't care that much.
- Parodied:
- Bob punishes Alice for the horrible crime of piracy ... by hitting her in the head with a pillow. Alice later tells Bob that she knows he pirates albums too and shows him the evidence. Bob uses Blatant Lies to defend his "innocence".
- Bob is a long-time fan of indie band Troper Project and has shown his worth by purchasing every one of their albums, as well as donating $500 a month to their official Patreon. The lead singer of Troper Project frequently gives him a shout-out for supporting their entire band. Needless to say, Bob is given a life sentence when he copies one of their songs to give to his friend Alice.
- The corrupt CEO of the RIT claims that the artists are starving because of music piracy ... while he pockets all of the income and spends it on his third yacht.
- The RIT makes a PSA that claims music piracy hurts their artists. They illustrate this point with a multimillionaire who whines about only being able to afford five of the six luxury cars he wanted.
- Every legal copy of an RIT album contains anti-piracy PSAs that basically accuse the listener of being a pirate already. All the actual pirates got rid of this warning for their pirated copies.
- Charlie's album flops, causing him to throw a tantrum where he whiningly blames piracy for it because everyone was too "cheap and entitled" to "pay for true art". It's obvious that it failed for a different reason: he's a Small Name, Big Ego Dreadful Musician, and his material is not even worth pirating.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The RIT sometimes adds warnings against piracy and sometimes doesn't.
- The RIT doesn't know of everyone who pirates albums from artists working in their catchment area, and for whatever reason they don't always press charges against those they do.
- Averted: The RIT doesn't make warnings against piracy.
- Enforced: See Justified.
- Lampshaded: "The RIT doesn't think highly of piracy. That's clear, but I wonder if these warnings have an effect other than annoying us."
- Invoked: The artists of the RIT request that the RIT try to discourage piracy.
- Exploited: The RIT's rival company Music of Tropes (MT), which thinks Digital Piracy Is Okay, advertises that it doesn't use annoying warnings against piracy.
- Defied: The RIT's disproportionate punishments of piracy cause a huge Internet Counterattack. Fearing massive boycotts, the RIT gives up or at least scales back its anti-piracy campaign.
- Discussed: "Do you think we'll see annoying, Anvilicious warnings against piracy?"
- Conversed: "Maybe piracy isn't morally good, but is it really as bad as these guys say?"
- Deconstructed: The RIT uses insane amounts of warnings and DRM against those who buy its albums legally. Most of the audience turns to pirating the RIT's albums to avoid the DRM, and/or just buying CDs from MT instead.
- Reconstructed: The RIT removes most of the warnings and DRM before it's too late (or at least make the DRM more tolerable). The company encourages the audience to buy their records legally now that they no longer have annoying DRM.
- Played for Laughs: After Alice is found to have copied an album, the RIT sics a goon squad on her and she incurs Amusing Injuries.
- Played for Drama: Alice gets sued for downloading a single album. She loses the lawsuit, gets a massive fine and goes into crippling debt as a result. Her life only goes downhill after that.
Back to Digital Piracy Is Evil. *
