I’m sure you’ve all seen it, that annoying, unskippable advertisement from whichever anti-piracy outfit is infecting your particular country. It focusses on a teen girl in a bedroom downloading something or other from a site titled “Feature Films”.  The dodgy, shakey-cam style titles read:

You wouldn’t steal a car.
You wouldn’t steal a handbag.
You wouldn’t steal a television.
You wouldn’t steal a movie.
Downloading pirated films is stealing.
Stealing is against the law.
Piracy. It’s a crime.

All well and good, except that downloading pirated films is not stealing, it’s Copyright Infringement. Piracy is where you board a ship out at sea and make off with it. Rum may be involved, and also planks.

But the best bit, the kicker, is that these ridiculous ads only appear on the legitimate, paid-for version of these films because pirates strip them out. Not only that, they serve to remind the buyer that they could have downloaded the film instead of paying for it, and without the annoying Anti-Copyright-Infringement ad on the front.

And yes, if I could download a car that had all the crap stripped out, but which was otherwise identical to the original, then I bloody would “steal” one.