| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Friday 28 July 2006: |
| Those anti-piracy ads in cinemas and sometimes on DVDs - the ones that say "piracy is theft"- are outright lying. Theft has a legal definition, piracy is not it, piracy is copyright violation. This brings to mind a question - if they're allowed to lie about legal terms, would it be okay for them to say, eg. "piracy is premeditated murder" or "piracy is genocidal war-crimes against civilians"? (Note, I'm not saying copyright violation is okay, just that it's legally, morally and sensibly distinct from theft, in that no goods, not even virtual goods, go missing as a result.) More interestingly, would it be okay for someone to produce and publish advertisements of "copyright-protection is pedophilia", "anti-piracy measures are slavery" and "the RIAA is illegal immigration"? Where is the boundary for acceptable "X is Y" lies in advertising? Could Burger-King advertise with the slogan "Big Macs are people"? That one wouldn't even be a lie, I'm pretty sure there are at least two people in the world who are called "Big Mac". Having thought of these few examples I'm now quite in favour of "X is Y" lies in advertising, provided they're sufficiently absurd that people won't buy into them - unlike the "piracy is theft (and also you're supporting drug barons)" campaign. If you had money to burn, what would you advertise with a comical "X is Y" lie? [13:50] |
| Nightshade |
| Cigarettes are Weapons of Mass Destruction! |
| Nameless |
| I liked the one that was more or less "Do drugs (smoking pot) is supporting terrorism" The government in the US tried this one for awhile and while they may be right in some cases about certain opiates and cocaine the adds were directed in their visuals toward pot. Giving children candy is drugging them (currently trying to be propigated on people through the new war on obesty; almost as dumb and senseless as that on drugs.) I'd like to see most clothing marketed as supporting slavery and anything made in china as supporting comunism..... Mainly on the second just to see the way everyone who buys stuff at wal-mart reacts. |
| Alonicus |
| Yeah, they could market that last one as "Buying Chinese is making YOUR family unemployed (and paying for missiles aimed at YOU !)", lol<\/A>/. On the drugs front, I'll never forget a T-Shirt that was doing the rounds in the 80's. A picture of a happy hippy, and the slogan "Let's smoke the Russians out of Afghanistan" :D |
| Nameless |
| I'd have to put a pretty poppy flower on that. |
| James |
| Soylent Green is people. |
| Doctor Vortex |
| Technically that one's more of an exposé than an ad. Still, it made me laugh. |
| SpasmodicMonk |
| Yes, my work mates and I regularly joked about how piracy was funding pedorism. The imagery mostly consisted of old men from Afghanistan having bus loads of school kids delivered to them every time a person copied a DVD. The children would then have sweeties offered to them in exchange of having suicide bombs arse raped into them. On reflection, that may not be as funny as it seemed at the time. |
| Carina |
| It's a bit like the old adage, 'Trespassers will be prosecuted'. No, they won't - it's not a crime, it's a tort, a civil wrong... 'Trespassers will have their asses sued from this fence/gate etc to hell and back' might be a more accurate deterrent. |
| RavenBlack |
| Ha, excellent. That seems a bit more pedantic, but that just makes it even more amusing. |
| Carina |
| Nothing wrong with a pedant. Unless it's a pedant who's disagreeing with you. Then they're just grossly annoying. Question: is a pedant still a pedant if they're wrong? Do you have to be right to be pedantic? |