Law & Society Blog

For a bit of fun and a blast from the past, here is an educational video, Don’t Copy That Floppy, from the Software Publisher’s Association (which merged with the Information Industry Association in 1999 to form the SIIA). I believe it is dated 1992, around the time of the first FBI raids on pirate bulleting boards. Check out the sound track and sophisticated finger movements of the gamers. If you can make it to the bit where the SPA lawyer (Ilene Rosenthal) comes on, you’ll notice she says something like: “Although the licenses may vary, the law is very simple… every program that you buy: that’s one program for one computer.” That seems to be making things a bit more simple than they are. There’s no way to say whether a program may be installed on more than one computer or freely shared without looking at the license agreement, after all. Here is a taste from the lyrics, rapped by M.E. Hart as M.C. Double Def D.P. [”Disk Protector”]:

To do the right thing, it’s really simple for you
The copyright law, it will tell you what to do
Buy one, for every computer you use
Anything else is like going to the store
Taking the disk, and walking out the door
It’s called thiefin’, stealin’, taking what’s not yours
Is that really where you want your life to go?
Think about it, I don’t think so.
Don’t copy! Don’t copy that floppy!

At the end you get a licence to copy the video for the “non-profit purpose of promoting the ethical and legal use of software.” Backups are okay, though.

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