We all know pirates are a crime. No matter how you choose to handle it, it’s likely to boil up to theft.
There is still one thing Im pretty sure we all encountered at some point during the years, that is anti-piracy propaganda. Yes, sadly, this hasn’t dried up in recent years. However, depending on your age, there are more than one hundred icon campaigns that were in the works over the years. From the start of the report, however, it seems that these adverts could have done more harm than good.
Without a doubt, a collaborative effort of research has only just discovered that all antipiracy advertising ever did was encourage piracy.
Anti-Piracy Adverts, so that all the illegalities get more protected!
The newest antipiracy campaign was the Never Don’t steal the car which ran through the 1990’s and to the mid 2000’s plethora of all kinds of advertising. It was plastered everywhere, including TV spots, theaters and as a precursor to almost every mainstream VHS release.
Nevertheless, the study concluded that such advertising, but despite its ability to stick in memory, never brought to the attention of piracy, which, if the reason is clear, played a factor in its propagation, not reduction! Why can you get the question? That’s the problem!
The worst of these is the extremely misty whose irrational idea was: Who would never steal a car awareness video aired in cinemas and DVDs the year 2000s? Some way or another involving downloading a movie is quite common among us. Somehow, a lot of users are stealing merchandise with their own hands, televisions, and cars, which diluted the message into a somewhat incorrect way.
Some guidance!
The research report successfully concluded by suggesting there are three – or three – key areas that any future anti-piracy campaign should avoid (perhaps):
- Don’t bother with anti-piracy ads unless movies or media release. The only one who will see them are those who have legitimately paid for them. This is not your target audience!
- Don’t use celebrities as a spokesperson for anti-piracy campaigns. People rarely like being educated by riches or wealthy who can afford higher moral standards.
- Stop making stupid comparisons. Stealing a car is definitely not the same as pirating a movie!
Anti-Piracy Campaigns Can Work If Done Right!
In my opinion, one of the best recent (ish) examples of active anti-piracy action was seen in Game Dev Tycoon. What was happening here? In a nutshell, the creators of the game released the pirate version themselves. Sounds like an idiot, right? Well, that came with a pretty significant catch. The game, in fact, would run perfectly for an hour or so. Or only your game created by the sim would stop making money and you would get a signature message.
As many pirates took to the official Steam forums to complain about the bug, they didn’t know it was true that the real intent of the pirates was to hide their interest in being played in a pirated copy rather than the legitimate version that didn’t contain that issue. A masterstroke by the developer clearly highlighted the most obvious problem when it comes to piracy!
If you want to take a deeper walk, I strongly recommend that you watch the video below from Ashens who viewed the antipiracy measures in the UK in a brilliant way and why they were largely bloody awful, frankly!
What do you think?