This month marks the 30th anniversary of the agreement that means legitimately purchased DVD/video owners everywhere have to sit through a minute of footage warning them about piracy.

The nagware stems from a resolution against piracy made at a Stockholm meeting of Interpol on 8 September 1977. Fast forward 30 years and we see the fruits of the accord, where videophilies are threatened and admonished against the evils of copyright in several different languages. And often at such crappy resolution that you have to squint to read it.

Before 1977 it was actually really hard to pirate a movie. These days video camera technology has got so cheap anyone with an overcoat and a steady hand can do it.

Time, perhaps, for the MPAA to toughen up its anti-piracy message. The clip from the It Crowd below really gets the message across in the way that those public information ads of the 1970s never did. ®

Bootnote

A big share and enjoy to Reg reader Tom Kilbourne who reminded us of the anniversary. ®