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You Wouldn't Steal a Car
Anti–copyright infringement campaign From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"You Wouldn't Steal a Car" is the first sentence and commonly used name of a public service announcement that debuted on July 12, 2004 in cinemas,[2] and July 27 on home media, which was part of the anti-copyright infringement campaign "Piracy. It's a crime." It was a co-production between the Federation Against Copyright Theft and the Motion Picture Association of America (now the MPA) in cooperation with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore,[3][4] and appeared in theaters internationally from 2004 until 2008, and on many commercial DVDs during the same period as an ad preceding the main menu, as either an unskippable or skippable video.
The announcement depicts either a teenage girl trying to illegally download a film, or two women attempting to buy DVDs from a bootlegger on the street. 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.
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.[4]
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Copyright concerns
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. Concerns have been expressed that the copy of the font used to design the commercial may not have been properly licensed.[12] In April 2025, Sky News confirmed 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.” Sky News did not find any evidence that the advert's creators knowingly used the pirated font and the Federation Against Copyright Theft commented that everyone involved in its creation was no longer at the organization.[1]
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In popular culture
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The advertisement has been parodied in Internet memes, including those using the phrase "You wouldn't download a car."[7][13]
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][14] 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.[4] 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.[15]
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".[16]
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.[17][18][19][20]
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.[21][22]
"You wouldn't screenshot an NFT" is a variant of the "You wouldn't steal a car" meme that satirizes non-fungible tokens,[23] 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.
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