You Wouldn't Steal a Car

It was a co-production between the Federation Against Copyright Theft and the Motion Picture Association of America (now the MPA) in cooperation with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore,[2][3] and appeared in theaters internationally from 2004 until 2008, and on many commercial DVDs during the same period as an ad preceding the main menu, as either an unskippable or skippable video.

The announcement depicts either a teenage girl trying to illegally download a movie or two women attempting to buy DVDs from a bootlegger interwoven with clips of a man committing theft of various objects, and equates these crimes to the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyrighted materials, such as films.

[4] Likewise, a 2022 behavioral economics paper published in The Information Society found the PSAs may, in fact, have increased piracy rates.

"[12][6] In 2007, The IT Crowd episode "Moss and the German" parodied the advertisement, mirroring its initial points before comparing copyright infringement to increasingly ludicrous crimes and consequences.

[3] In 2021, the old domain name used by the campaign (piracyisacrime.com) was purchased and redirected to a YouTube upload of the parody, possibly inspired by a Reddit discussion.