The now iconic clip, which has also received many parodies (for example in the series IT Crowd), lists a number of crimes that a person would not normally commit. And he adds that stealing a movie is identical.
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According to a recently published study published in the journal The Information Society however, all these campaigns make the mistake of weakening their own message by conflating stronger arguments with weaker ones.
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“The most blatant example is the campaign from the beginning of the millennium broadcast in cinemas and on DVD. It includes relevant arguments (stealing a DVD in a store) as well as more absurd ones (stealing a bag, TV or car). This dilutes the meaning of the message,” write the authors of the study. People then do not take the campaign message too seriously.
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What’s more, the campaign may very well have caused people to steal more movies. Because it attracted all viewers to the fact that films are stolen on a large scale and to instill in many people the idea that stealing is a kind of, perhaps unwanted, but common norm.
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Parody of the campaign in the series The IT Crowd (Ajťáci)
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“During his experiment,” the study’s authors point out, “Caldini found in 2003 that messages and signs in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park aimed at discouraging the theft of small pieces of petrified wood inadvertently increased theft rates because they reported such thefts.”
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The Robin Hood effect
Directly or indirectly reporting that many people are stealing movies is counterproductive and encourages piracy by leading the target audience (in this case, all viewers) to engage in similar behavior, the study’s authors say.
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According to them, reporting on how much the film industry loses due to piracy is similarly unfortunate. As an example, they cite India’s 2018 anti-piracy campaign, which said that copying movies is theft. The problem was that all of them featured famous Indian actors whose fortunes ranged between 22 and 400 million dollars (roughly between 500 million and nine billion crowns).
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“And this in a country where the average annual income per capita is just under 2,000 dollars (ie around 48,000 crowns),” note the authors of the study.
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On the contrary, it will give pirates a sense of justification. They have the Robin Hood effect of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. According to the authors of the study, one of the solutions is to donate, for example, a portion of the film revenue to charity, or at least put people from the film industry other than multimillionaire celebrities at the forefront of the campaign.
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