You Wouldn't Steal a Car

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You Wouldn't Steal a Car
You Wouldn't Steal a Car.png
"You Wouldn't Steal a Car" as shown in the campaign.
Directed byRicky Mintz
Written byRicky Mintz, Joe Nelms
Produced byRicky Mintz
Edited byTerry Paul, Daryl Clift
Production
company
The Idea Place - Warner Bros.
Release date
  • July 12, 2004 (2004-07-12)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

"You Wouldn't Steal a Car" is the unofficial name of a series of public service announcement trailers created by Warner Bros. and marketed by the Motion Picture Association of America in 2004, as part of a greater anti-copyright infringement campaign known as "Piracy. It's a crime.". Its de facto title is derived from the first sentence within the trailer.

Contents

Background

The trailers were a joint effort between the Motion Picture Association of America (now the MPA), seven major film studios, and the National Association of Theatre Owners (now Cinema United). [1] [2] It debuted in theaters on July 12, 2004, [3] [4] and on home media on July 27. It appeared in theaters internationally from 2004 until 2008, and on many commercial DVDs as an often-unskippable segment preceding the main menu.

The trailer was directed, shot, and edited by the Idea Place, a Warner Bros. in-house advertising agency, but the messaging was collectively agreed on by all participating film studios and the MPA. Shooting took place on the Paramount Pictures studio lot. [1]

Synopsis

The first spot, officially titled Downloader, depicts a teenage girl trying to illegally download a film; the second depicts two women attempting to buy DVDs from a bootlegger on the streets. In both versions, clips are interwoven of a man committing theft of various objects (which include a car, handbag, and DVD in both versions, plus a television or mobile phone depending on the version), and equates these crimes to the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyrighted materials, such as films. The ad ends with either a message that downloading pirated films is stealing, or buying pirated copies of films is stealing, which is against the law. [5] [6] The girl ultimately cancels the download and the couple choose not to purchase any of the bootleg DVDs.

Public reception

According to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, the announcement was unsuccessful and was largely a source of ridicule. [5] Likewise, a 2022 behavioral economics paper published in The Information Society found the PSAs may, in fact, have increased piracy rates. [7] [8] By 2009, over 100 parodies of the announcement had been created. [2]

It was reported that the music in the announcement was itself used without permission. [9] [10] However, one source disputes this, saying the reporting is the result of conflation regarding a different anti-piracy ad that used stolen music composed in 2006. [11]

The "ransom note" typeface used in the campaign was FF Confidential, designed by the Dutch typographer Just van Rossum. Reports arose in 2025 that the copy of the font used to design the commercial may not have been properly licensed. [12] In April 2025, Sky News reported, via extraction from old campaign PDFs, that the actual font used was Xband-Rough, a widely-distributed pirated version of FF Confidential. Van Rossum was aware of the font Xband-Rough, but unaware that the advert has used the pirated font and described its use as "hilarious.” The Federation responded by saying that everyone involved in the creation of the announcement was no longer at the organization. [13] According to a different investigation by journalists, the pirated font was only in a domestic campaign by the British Federation Against Copyright Theft, who had no involvement in the making of the original PSA. [1]

The advertisement has been parodied in Internet memes, including those using the phrase "You wouldn't download a car." [7] [14]

In 2007, The IT Crowd episode "Moss and the German" parodied the advertisement, mirroring its initial points before comparing copyright infringement to increasingly ludicrous crimes and consequences. [8] [15] Finlo Rohrer of the BBC considered this version to be "perhaps the best known" of over 100 parodies of the ad that had been created by 2009. [2] In 2021, the old domain name used by the campaign (piracyisacrime.com) was purchased and redirected to a YouTube upload of the parody, possibly inspired by a Reddit discussion. [16]

An advertisement for the 2008 film Futurama: Bender's Game parodied the campaign by having Bender repeatedly interrupt the narrator to say he would do the crimes described. The advertisement was titled "Downloading Often Is Terrible", or "D.O.I.T". [17]

The Greens–European Free Alliance, in association with Rafilm, released their own parody version of the film to oppose the media industry and government views on existing copyright laws, as well as to educate the public on alternative views about intellectual property. [18] [19] [20] [21]

External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Australia Day (Piracy parody)

In 2017, The Juice Media produced a controversial parody of the video for Australia Day. The video compared the celebration of Australia Day, which marks the arrival of the First Fleet and is often referred to as "Invasion Day" by Indigenous Australians, to celebrating the Nazis' Final Solution, dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the September 11 attacks. [22] [23]

"You wouldn't screenshot an NFT" is a variant of the "You wouldn't steal a car" meme that satirizes non-fungible tokens, [24] based on the idea that the ease of making digital copies of the work of art associated with an NFT undermines the value of purchasing the NFT.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Joe Foley (November 11, 2025). "The mystery of iconic Y2K anti-piracy ad has finally been solved". Creative Bloq.
  2. 1 2 3 Finlo Rohrer (June 18, 2009). "Getting inside a downloader's head". BBC. Archived from the original on December 9, 2012. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Piracy is a Crime". www.piracyisacrime.com. Archived from the original on April 16, 2005. Retrieved September 5, 2025.
  4. ↑ Van der Sar, Ernesto (September 5, 2021). "Iconic "Piracy Is a Crime" Domain Now Redirects to IT-Crowd Parody". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on July 4, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
  5. 1 2 Harris, Sophia (March 28, 2017). "Netflix's anti-piracy team aims to make stealing content uncool". CBC.ca . Archived from the original on November 12, 2020.
  6. ↑ Poon, Christopher. "'You wouldn't steal a car,' but I'd download one | Dot Comrade | Pique Newsmagazine | Whistler, CANADA". Pique Newsmagazine. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  7. 1 2 Gault, Matthew (August 2, 2022). "Widely Mocked Anti-Piracy Ads Made People Pirate More, Study Finds". Vice . Archived from the original on August 15, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
  8. 1 2 ""You Wouldn't Steal A Movie" Advert May Have Led To More People Stealing Movies". IFLScience. August 3, 2022. Retrieved April 23, 2025.
  9. ↑ "Anti-Piracy Advert Music Was Stolen". The Ransom Note. Archived from the original on August 14, 2021.
  10. ↑ S. Kruszelnicki, Karl (January 29, 2013). "Anti-pirating ad music stolen". ABC News. Archived from the original on August 14, 2021.
  11. ↑ Van der Sar, Ernesto (June 25, 2017). "Sorry, the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" Anti-Piracy Ad Wasn't "Pirated"". TorrentFreak . Archived from the original on August 3, 2021.
  12. ↑ fangly (April 19, 2025). ""Piracy. It's a Crime." PSA". Fonts In Use. Retrieved April 23, 2025.
  13. ↑ Carroll, Mikey (April 28, 2025). "You wouldn't steal a font: Famous anti-piracy campaign may have used pirated typeface". Sky News . Retrieved April 28, 2025.
  14. ↑ "DRM for furniture: You wouldn't download a chair". Geek.com. March 5, 2013. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved November 27, 2020.
  15. ↑ "The IT Crowd - Series 2 - Episode 3: Piracy warning". YouTube. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
  16. ↑ Van der Sar, Ernesto (September 5, 2021). "Iconic "Piracy Is a Crime" Domain Now Redirects to IT-Crowd Parody". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on July 4, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
  17. ↑ Maxwell, Andy (October 31, 2008). "Futurama's Anti-Piracy Message, Just Do It". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on April 17, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
  18. ↑ "European Politicians Launch Pro-Filesharing Campaign". Torrent Freak. Archived from the original on September 28, 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2021.
  19. ↑ ""I Wouldn't Steal": European Greens advocate file-swapping". ars TECHNICA. January 21, 2008. Archived from the original on September 28, 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2021.
  20. ↑ "I wouldn't steal". iwouldntsteal.net. The Greens-European Free Alliance. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
  21. ↑ "I wouldn't steal <video>". creativecommons.org. The Greens-European Free Alliance. January 26, 2008. Archived from the original on April 26, 2018. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
  22. ↑ "This Video Compares Australian Settlement To 9/11, Hiroshima And The Holocaust". BuzzFeed. Archived from the original on July 16, 2018. Retrieved June 17, 2018.
  23. ↑ "Invasion Day ad compares Australia Day to tragic events in history". ABC News . January 25, 2017. Archived from the original on February 25, 2023.
  24. ↑ Clarendon, Dan (February 21, 2022). "Do NFTs Have a Screenshot Issue?". Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.

Further reading

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