Earlier this month we reported on an antipiracy ad campaign, conducted by the Motion Picture Association of America, which is attempting to discourage college students from illegally sharing and downloading movies by telling them that such actions will lead to fewer jobs available in the creative sector when they graduate. Now the MPAA is helping New York City conduct a similar ad campaign targeting their citizens.
“Piracy Doesn’t Work in NYC” is the message that is being displayed to residents of the city via brightly colored signs and a website with some awkward video ads.
The campaign was spearheaded by Katherine Oliver, Commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, who says she got the idea following an MPAA-aided crackdown of bootleg discs in 2007.
“I wasn't aware that book publishing was being affected by illegal downloading before," Oliver told CNET. "But I now know as reading digital books becomes more popular to read on different devices, piracy is moving into publishing. I think this is an international problem and we want to raise awareness."
The Learn More section of the website tells New Yorkers that when they illegally download a movie, song, or book, they are threatening the jobs of more than 700,000 citizens who work in the creative industries of the city. “Think about this,” the open letter from Oliver urges, “Maybe your best friend works in publishing. Maybe your sister is a production assistant. Maybe your neighbor’s a musician. Maybe you’re a writer… the next time you’re about to click ‘Download Now’ from an illegitimate source, take a moment and think about those 700,000 New Yorkers. Then think to yourself, ‘Is it really worth it?’”
As we’ve noted before, the job loss argument from the MPAA would be much more compelling if they would, for once, provide some hard data to back up their allegations. Instead, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per quarter lobbying lawmakers in Washington, DC to get their way, while they bully and attempt to censor legitimate websites across international borders.
Piracy issues are not as easily solved as to guilt people into not doing it by telling them their sister will lose her job because of it. The internet has significantly changed the landscape for the creative sector, and those industries need to find ways to learn to adapt and offer reasonably priced and easily accessible digital products for consumers. Until then, as far as I’m concerned, they are just spouting numbers in an attempt to preserve their antiquated operations.
