"You wouldn't steal a DVD" (Spoilers for blood-pressure raising, morally dubious, anti-copying ads)

[jack]

Many DVDs I see start with an anti-illegal-copying message, which always annoys me each time I see it. As a reminder that illegal copying is (even perhaps prevalent amongst your friends) not just automatically normal, it's reasonable, but it annoys me because:

* It's boring seeing it come up every time

* It's annoying that *I* see it, because I feel (rightly or wrongly) that I don't need it, and feel someone is patronising me by telling me obvious things

* And by using such "dramatic" imagery, it suggests copyright infringement is as bad as Really Serious Physically Immediately Harmful Crime (TM) that adverts against often employ, and it feels like it's trying to tell me I don't have to moral maturity to make those judgements

* It feels like it's saying any more complex analysis of the situation (of which we've seen plenty on these pages) is stupid

* The examples it uses -- stealing a car, a purse are disingenuous. Notice that stealing a car gives the thief much less benefit than the nominal value of the car, and harms the victim much more than the nominal value, what with shock, finding another car, increased premiums, etc. And the same for a purse. But copying someone's DVD harms the DVD's original owner not at all by the act itself [there's certainly indirect harm].[1]

* Choosing that comparison grates on me. It's like having an advert saying "I know you just rented this DVD, but instead of enjoying it, now spend an hour contemplating whether these two acts of theft are morally equivalent"

* The argument, "it's theft" I charitably suppose to mean "and theft is only used to describe wrong things", which as seen above is questionable enough. But it always sounds like "this is wrong because it's against the law". Which is a reasonable guide to action -- drink driving ads have a very effective one-two punch, saying "If you drive drunk, you'll kill someone. And go to jail." But this is definitely admitting you won't get caught, just saying that it's wrong, because it's theft.

I can just imagine a helpful copyright representative barging into the last supper saying he'd heard Jesus had plans to circumvent a legal execution by coming back to life and spreading peace and happiness to all peoples of the world, but sorry, that was wrong, because that's not what the law said.

OK, I think that's everything. When I'm well I promise I'll make less obvious, though not less comedic, rants.

And now for something, actually relevant

[1] That's actually an interesting comparison. There *are* physical-world examples where theft has effectively no immediate impact, but does cut into someone's rightful profit. For instance, if a corner shop makes and sells sweets, and the cost of making the sweets is completely negligible compared to the shop.

Then stealing the sweets is definitely wrong. However, children doing so might be seen more as naughty than bad. Of course, in this case, the costs involved are quite small, so the shopkeeper might well not be losing very much, and not inclined to prosecute.

I can think of other examples, though none particularly apposite or on a comparable scale. I'm not sure if any actually cast any useful light, but it's an interesting perspective.

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTbX1aMajow

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) That probably says it better than I could :)

(BTW, it helps me if people can give a link a relevant name a little, unless that's a complete spoiler.)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I normally would, but I wanted it to be a surprise.

You're lucky, sometimes I email people tinyurl links!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

People copy stuff because they don't realise it's wrong/illegal, don't think they'll get caught, or are *naughty*. I think saying it is more than naughty is getting hysterical for the reasons you outlined above.

I think you have to notice danger signs when very large numbers of people in society are committing the crime, and are receiving what most people would consider completely disproportionate penalties when caught. Consider the people in America being fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading a few albums of music, or the notices in the UK before films that indicate a 10 year prison sentence is awaiting anyone who records the film.

People need to be paid for their work, and a society full of freeloaders (or sharers depending on your chosen vocab) is not going to produce very much new content, but penalties need to be proportionate. It's like Judge Dredd where they propose introducing execution for minor crimes. The industry needs to start working with the people rather than criminalising them.

The irony of these warnings (like game copy protection) is that it only serves to annoy the people who legitimately purchase the video. Anyone who downloads it off the internet will get a clean version stripped of such annoyances.

Still, there are more annoying things on DVDs. The Disney DVDs have several (5-10?) minutes of unskippable adverts at the beginning.

[naath.livejournal.com]

is that it only serves to annoy the people who legitimately purchase the video

Some people legitimately buy (or more likely rent) the video/DVD and then rip it either to share or for their own later use - maybe these adds are targeted at them. Personally I think this approach is mad because a)I almost never rewatch films so keeping a copy of things I have rented never really occurred to me (I buy the films/TV shows I want to keep copies of; even if I had initially got illegal copies) and b)if you want an illegal copy you can have one much sooner by going to any of the large illegal-film sites; stuff is often up *before* cinematic release, TV things are caught as first televised in the US... there's really no point in making your own copy.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Or indeed, they're aimed at people who download *sometimes* but also watch original DVDs, who are probably the people who *might* be persuaded anyway.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

TV things are caught as first televised in the US... there's really no point in making your own copy
Yes, that's true.

TV is often available in HD (720p or above) online when it's not available in HD at all on DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD, or if it is the quality can sometimes be better from the online version (which is a 5-10GB+ MPEG2 stright off the air rip).

The record companies seem to have got the message, all 4 of the record companies now sell DRM free MP3s but the MPAA companies still think they can control things.

[simont]

But copying someone's DVD harms the DVD's original owner not at all by the act itself

True, but it misses the real point. Stealing a car or a handbag is a crime against the person who owns the car or handbag; but making an unauthorised copy of a DVD, if one considers it a crime at all, is a crime against the publisher, not against the person who owns the physical DVD you copied. Of course, by implicitly equating it with crimes which harm individual people, these adverts gloss over that point – presumably deliberately.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that's what I meant, the original owner being the owner of the copyright , who is harmed not directly, but indirectly. I'm not writing clearly enough tonight.

In fact, the idea that it's a crime against the person whose DVD you copied -- generally yourself, or a close friend who encouraged you to do so, but even if not -- seemed so obscure it hadn't even occurred to me! :)

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

I don't think indirect harm is morally less reprehensible than direct harm. Neither is harm to a nebulous group of people morally less bad than harm to individual people.

(But I do agree that the anti-copying ads are annoying, hysterical and counter-productive).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I was writing quickly, it's possible "direct" and "indirect" don't describe what I mean (I don't know if you were misled). The point being that if I deprive someone of X, then they're immediately and directly harmed by a measurable amount. If I illegally copy X, that in itself causes no harm (eg. if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, and don't tell anyone about it, etc), but probably does cause harm indirectly, for instance, in lost revenue from people not buying X. And the harm in both cases is equally wrong, but in the second case the harm more nebulous, it's not clear if every case of copying contributes to the harm to the copyright holder (eg. if there's a threshold below which it doesn't really matter, either in number of copies or fidelity of copies), or if it sometimes might provide a greater overall benefit than harm, etc. (Which doesn't automatically make it ok -- it's wrong to unilaterally infringe someone's rights, even if it might benefit them, but it seems less or at least more questionably wrong to do so.)

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

The other things that annoy me about it are:

- The people watching it are either law-abiding in this regard, or they are not. If they are not, I doubt watching that will change their minds, and if they are then it's just an annoying irrelevance. In any case, ignorance of the law is no defence.

- It looks like something they spent lots of money on, which could easily have been spent doing something more USEFUL about the issue.

- Some DVDs let you skip it by pressing menu, some by pressing scene skip, some by pressing fast forward, and some not at all. This inconsistency annoys me out of all proportion. If it was always there you could go and make a cup of tea while it loaded, but you don't because you think MAYBE you could skip it, and then you try all the possibilities to find out how....

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You wonder if anything can be described as annoying in ten totally different ways, or if this is truly special :)

- The people watching it are either law-abiding in this regard, or they are not

Although actually I thought about this above. That probably a lot of people download *sometimes* or *often* but know its illegal and/or feel just a little guilty about it. Like breaking the speed-limit when you're fairly sure it won't make any difference is now, and driving whilst drunk used to be.

I guess they want to change the perception to make it seem actually unnacceptable, as drink driving campaigns eventually had some success with.

Of course, since filesharing isn't as bad as drink driving in most respects, it's a bit of a forced aim, but I think there is possibly a relevant audience.

Of course, it *might* even *work*. I'm doubtful; advertising campaigns have produced shifts in public opinion, but getting people to think something they enjoy doing is wrong is always a lot more uphill than telling them to hate someone they don't know, or to buy Cool Thing 197 (TM).

- It looks like something they spent lots of money on,

I think you do it too much credit. They no doubt *did* spend lots of money on it, but to me it looks cheap, edgy and faux-youth.

[1] Or at least make backups, or at least copy from DVD to DVD player memory to TV screen...

[simont]

You wonder if anything can be described as annoying in ten totally different ways, or if this is truly special :)

Ten is fairly impressive. I've been in conversations about Pascal's Wager in which between us we came up with seven distinct ways in which it was drivel (and I subsequently found a web page listing exactly those seven, so it's possible we actually managed to enumerate the complete set!). I think that's the most I can easily remember for the same thing, though.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL. Funnily enough, I've been in conversations about Pascal's Wager where yadda yadda blah ditto, but funnily enough totally different conversations. Although I don't remember any special number of flaws.

Actually the conversation I remember wasn't Pascal's Wager[1] but the ontological argument[2], where we had a heated discussion over a dinner party[3] about which was the fundamental flaw in it, and eventually agreed that if all four of us all had our own favourite fundamental flaw in it, it didn't really matter, it was a net of an argument patched together with flaws.

I may be biased, because I've had the ontological argument explained to me in supposed predicate logic by message board cranks, but it always sounds like it was made up by a message board crank. I can't manage to assign *any* meaning to it, let alone one i know whether I agree with or not...

[1] Which I don't agree with, but I think is interesting to think about
[2] Eek. I think it was, now I'm not sure. One or the other.
[3] Tim and Jack, atheist; Pete and Rob, CU :)

[simont]

Yes, the ontological argument is pretty bad too. My favourite approach to it is to correct it as follows:

• By definition God, if he existed, would be perfect.
• One of the properties of a perfect thing is that it exists.
• Therefore God, if he existed, would necessarily exist.

I think Pascal's Wager is even worse, though.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, I think I disagree with all three, but I'm fairly sure there's some bullet points I disagree with still missing in between :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ten is a good number. Though I'm not sure if there's any international standard. The advert is really quite concise, it contains ten orthogonal offensive propositions in three or four short sentence fragments, which is pretty good going.

But I'm sure we could think of more if we went on...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Apparently they would steal someone's software, though (http://mjg59.livejournal.com/78698.html).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise they were pretending to be non-hypocritical about it :)