E-Dribble

Who remembers this video by the SIIA? It was an early attempt to thwart software piracy and came complete with a goofy but charming and endearing rapper, interviews with game developers that tipped the nerd scale and finally, a game that fit on a single 1.44 floppy disk. It spent almost 10 minutes explaining to you that the game development community couldn’t make more games if it didn’t get paid for the game that you were copying onto your floppy.

Well, it seems that the SIIA wanted to update it’s message and is rolling out a sequel. This time, instead of using the game developers to bring tears to your eyes, they’ve taken a slightly different approach. This version shows one person becoming a prison bitch and inking jailhouse tattoos and another getting their mom tackled by the SWAT team because of their downloading.

The first PSA made you aware of the fact that piracy would lead to the early demise of the digital age. Hopefully, the second one will tackle that little hiccup in predicting the future before they send little Billy to the bighouse for making a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R..

It’s a great time for the software development community to begin trying to scare the shit out of their customers. After over 30,000 lawsuits, the RIAA has actually won in one case, and big! The movie association has been labeling their viewing clientele as thieves for a few years now and it seems the time is finally right for the software developers to take of the gloves and join the party. I know they’re already well into development, but in the spirit of doing my part to prevent the collapse of the digital era, I wanted to offer a verse to them, provided under the CC license, of course:

Go ahead and make that copy
Set it up as a share
Give a copy to your friends
See if we care.

When the men break down your door
and lay your mom out on the grass,
It’s just a little while until
you’re in prison, taking it in the ass.

Don’t copy that floppy
Don’t copy that floppy