Pong and penguins: Europe’s best anti-piracy ads

Yesterday in the European Parliament six winners of the competition Hands Off My Design were announced – three students and three professionals. Organised by the European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy and supported by OHIM, the competition was intended to generate “guerrilla or viral” marketing tools. While most of the professional entries focused on the dangers of piracy, or explaining why it was like stealing from a high-street shop, the winning student entry graphically illustrated how copied material quickly swamps original content.
The game of Pong begins tamely, with the ‘copier’ gaining gigabytes of material as it exchanges shots with the ‘owner’. But as the copier grows in size, the pace of the game speeds up and the owner is knocked off, the copier eventually swamping the whole screen.
The advert, which can be seen here along with the other entries, concludes with the words ‘Piracy is not a game. We all have something to lose’. It was created by Julien Moreau from the ECV Atlantique School in France.

Industry associations of copyright owners have struggled in recent years to get their message right. The introductory message on DVDs, for example, has swung between threats of prison to thanking the viewer for buying a DVD rather than downloading a copy.
As Managing IP writes in this month’s editorial, the industry’s problem has been illustrated by the reaction to legislation in the US and the shutting down of Megaupload.com.
Our second-favourite entry was also from a student: Lauri Särak’s cartoon of a pirate slowing sinking his ship as he steals more and more things, including the Mona Lisa.
The European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy is planned to be transferred to OHIM following the adoption of a regulation that will be voted on at the Parliament’s plenary session this month.