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For years, cinema goers and DVD buyers were repeatedly lectured via the medium of the pre-roll video: downloading movies was stealing, like pinching a handbag or a car. It bordered on offensive, since it was mostly only paying customers who were ever forced to sit through them.
Thankfully, the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness — owners of the delightful domain PiracyIsACrime.com — has funded some considerably nicer please-don’t-steal-our-stuff cinema ads. Ditching the anti-piracy stance, they exist under the guise of thanking you, the paying customer, for enjoying the film industry with your money and not your bandwidth.
There are three 30-second ads in total, parodies of The Life of Brian, Jaws and The Lord of The Rings, and are the work of Little Britain director Steve Bendelack and actor Noel Clarke. They’re part of a campaign called You Make The Movies.
This kind of positive reinforcement will do little to discourage piracy. Rather, its jackpot will be the retention of the paying customers it still has, instead of insulting them with anti-piracy propaganda. And we applaud the move for that radical shift into the world of common sense, if for nothing else.
You can check out the campaign’s Web site at youmakethemovies.com, and check out our favourite of the three new ads — Bigger Boat, a Jaws parody — here.
