Taking a firm stance against the worsening global trend of illegally downloading films and series, DVD and CD production companies have today announced their decision to embed all their products with powerful anti-piracy measures, such as Adam Sandler’s Funny People or Jack and Jill.
"When we look at past cases of illegal downloads and internet piracy, we see time and time again how any CD or DVD protected with embedded content made by Adam Sandler is a powerful agent in deterring torrenters from stealing films,” said a spokesperson for Miramax Pictures, Hugh Torrent. “No one downloads them. In fact, the measures are so powerful that they have been known to even instill overwhelming sensations of nausea, vomiting and suicide in those exposed to them.”
"Imagine the scene: you're a pirate. You want to watch the latest Game of Thrones episode, but don't want to support the studio or actors in it. So you just illegally download from some shady site. That awesome theme music plays - we like to lull them into a sense of false security - and then BOOM. Subtle racism and vomit-inducing fart jokes bereft of any talent hits you straight in the brain."
Torrents said the historical evidence was powerful.
“Time and time again, we have seen the potency of footage embedded with this protection software. In the past we have run many, many experiments testing the latest versions of this defence software. Like when we first introduced the advanced content protection software in Spanglish and then slowly started to perfect it into its pirate-viewer-kryptonite forms in Blended and, oh god, Grown Ups 2. Literally no one pirates that last movie. Sure, it was so powerful it physically sickened legitimate viewers in the theatre, but that's the price we pay in the war against torrenters.”
And despite universal outcry from international human rights organisations and activism groups saying that such measures are “an extreme abuse of power” and “a despicably cruel extreme”, movie companies have stood by their decision.
“We’ve tried to scare off pirates with Cease and Desist letters, legal threats, huge fines, jail time, and really stupid anti-piracy adverts, but [illegal downloads] have continued unabated,” he said. “It’s about time we took extreme measures.”
However, the move has been branded “unoriginal copy-catting” by the South African film industry, saying they’ve been doing this for years.
“Piracy has been a huge issue in South Africa for years,” they said. “This is why we routinely protect our CDs and DVDs with content produced by Steve Hofmeyr and Leon Schuster – anti-piracy methods so powerful they’ve been known to make people commit suicide in the most brutal manner possible right in public places."
For those of you wanting to copy-paste this onto their own website without my permission, please study the image below.
Pic (my edit) made of Commons images and Head by Alex Neman. Yes, I know the hand is the wrong way round. Jesus, give me a break.
