Don’t Copy That Floppy!

The above blast from the past is an anti-copyright infringement video from 1992 featuring MC Double Def DP, the “Disk Protector.” Other than the dancing, corny dialogue and dated aesthetics, what entertains me most about this video is the choice of games used to illustrate how piracy will supposedly instigate the “end of the computer age” :

No Carmen Sandiego, no Oregon Trail
Tetris and the others, they're all gonna fail
Not because we want it but because you're just takin' it
Disrespecting all the folks who are making it
The more you take, the less there will be
The disks become fewer, the games fall away
The screen starts to tweak, and then it will fade
Programs fall through a black hole in space
The computer world becomes bleak and stark
Loses its life and the screen goes dark

Welcome to the end of the computer age! Bwahahahaha!

Tetris hardly seems a convincing example when its history is marked by a number of legal disputes surrounding who has the rights to produce it. Indeed, how could copying one of the many released versions of the game be deemed to be ripping off the “creativity of someone’s mind” that is “frozen in time” on the disk, even if we accept the myth of individual authorship, when the companies producing it are not the originators of the idea.

The video further undermines its own prediction of doom should copyright infringement continue in the interview sound bite of Janet Hunter at 03:47, who claims to “get a thrill out of seeing something actually working that [she] put together.” Certainly, we should not be so blinded by capitalism that we forget that cultural production is not inherently nor holistically about profit. People get immense satisfaction from creatively producing, and part of that satisfaction comes from having one’s work actually seen and enjoyed by others. Ironically, by giving permission to copy their video for non-profit purposes, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) recognises that the most effective means for getting one’s work seen is precisely by allowing it to be shared.

In the unlikely scenario that the original video left you thirsting for more, do enjoy the 2009 sequel below!