You wouldn't steal a car...

... or would you?

No? Not even an Aston Martin?? Good. Stealing is wrong. Unless you're stealing away from bad company. But I digress...

Sure, you wouldn't steal a car and you wouldn't steal a purse and you wouldn't steal a TV set, so you shouldn't steal a movie because unauthorised downloads are illegal and piracy is a crime punishible with up to 3 years of imprisionment in some countries... yada yada yada (not Yadda, who, if you don't know, is a Jedi master of the same species as Yoda). For those of you who don't recognise this gibberish, it's the ethics appeal you can often see at the beginning of a movie screening. And voilá, we have a topic for today's rant.

Dearest folks who push this copyright stuff;
We're aware of your message. We've been aware of it since the earliest days of good ol' departed Napster. Computer users, even the least savvy ones, are aware that if there is a way of acquiring goods or services for free whereas other ways would have one pay for the very same goods or services then the former must have some measure of illicity to it. Furthermore movie-goers pay for their tickets before they even see this very annoying advertisement of yours, often not knowing if the movie they are about to see is even worth the ticket price, only able to judge (or misjudge) from trailers, which can be deceiving. How many times has one sat through a screening of a movie they wouldn't have given the time of day just because the ticket was already paid for? However, stolen movies don't have your ethics appeal (I'm guessing. Not that I've ever stolen a movie, but why would one bother to steal such an annoying , not to mention utterly useless, little thing such as your silly ad?). So, bottom line is, you punish honest people (or less than straight-arrows in their moments of honesty) with your propaganda whereas the rotten get away with it. As if having to sit through blatantly capitalistic commercial publicity even before the trailers wasn't bad enough.
My advice to you: Sod off already! Ignorance isn't an excuse for any sort of crime, so don't even bother to argue that your piece of refuse you push on movie-goers serves the purpose of deterring copyright pirates with a warning-veiled threat. They, of all people, are aware of the risks they may be taking breaking your laws. Furthermore, even those laws are, ultimately, pointless, as there are quite a few ways around them. Hint: Sweeden has no copyright laws, China's government, who polices and censors Chinese web servers, offers great leniency to all forms of piracy, concerning itself with dissident anti-government propaganda and works of art which violate their laws, such as that no drawing may represent corpses or skeletons. So, really, pack your poorly shot would-be ad and find some lint underneath your beds. It must be way more interested in it than we are.

And for the humorous part, can you believe I've been shush!-ed by a talker for commenting on a trailer during the ethics appeal? Those crazy kids...

ArabianShark just loves the movies... like you hadn't guessed yet.