Before watching Fantastic Four last night (I’ll blog a review later), we were shown a little clip intending to discourage video/dvd piracy.  The clip flashed with scenes of someone’s purse being stolen, then another theft (a car?) and tables where bootlegged dvds were being sold.

Now, let me quickly say that I have never knowingly used ripped-off or bootlegged copies of videos and never intend to.  However . . .

The edgy portrayel of piracy we saw before the movie made it look kind of cool.  Streetwise.  Non-conformist.  Anti-establishment. 

The negative association with more commonly disapproved-of theft like car-jacking and purse-snatching was a good idea, and the thieves shown in those examples were people not likely to be admired–people who looked mean or ‘bad news’.  In contrast, the people shown around the black market table looked like students at a university near you.  People we might be friends with.  Maybe the clip’s intent was to point out that regular people steal in the form of piracy, but they ended with portraying it as kind of cool.

I hopped online to see what I could find and came across this dinosauric clip that shows a couple kids about to copy a computer game, then being told how naughty that is by a rapper.  The message may have worked at one time, but the trouble is that by modern standards these kids are ‘capitol D dorks’.  Not only that, but their acting is terrible.  It’s an old clip, but it’s out there on the net where anybody trying to learn about video piracy would come across it and might be influenced.

Then there’s the positive PR trump that ‘video piracy’ enjoys.  The name piracy. 

Americans have a love affair with pirates.  We line up to take the Disney ride, attend pirate festivals, and dress up as pirates for Halloween.  Pirates of the Caribbean needs only a mention here, ’cause you’ve all got it there in your mind.  Most the women I know would turn into swooning girls if they see Cap’n Jack Sparrow walking their way.

So why do we call it video ‘piracy’?  Who thought that name would send unpleasant and guilty tremors deep into our conscience?  Isn’t there something negative is could be called, like ‘filch’ or ‘swindle’?  Maybe even call it what it is – theft.