Carry the one

Behold “Copy that Floppy” (via in4mador and digg) a ten-minute PSA from sometime in the deep dark past of the computer age (around the time people were still calling it “the computer age”)

This is an excellent case study of all the advertising clichés from the eighties, from the overplayed “let’s put a rap in there to communicate to the kids” concept to the stilted dialogue all the way down to the subtle pro-Reagan undertones which still permeate popular culture today (SUBSCRIBE TO MY POLITICAL NEWSLETTER FOR MORE INSIGHTS LIKE THIS!!).

Sorry I think I was channeling my Sociology 101 professor for a second. What (maybe) makes this entire video worth watching are the references to specific games from this era, like Oregon Trail (the Indian has dysentery and a broken leg and has also been dead for three months) and Carmen Sandiego. That’s right kids, before it had an acapella theme song, it was a crappy video game that made learning tedious. (Hit F-12 to see Carmen topless).

Even a hundred years later, the relevance of the subject matter in this video is a little chilling. Instead of P2P networks, kids are trading files manually (and the nerdier ones are using the BBS and owning you at Trade Wars). Files have gotten a little harder to copy, but the problem is still the same. The irony is this video would probably do more to curb software piracy today than current methods, since a little education on the matter goes a long way.

When people are expected to do the right thing, say by voluntarily contributing to open source and freeware programmers, they usually will do so, but they still need to be informed enough to know what the right thing to do is. And that right thing is to produce another epic rap video educating the masses about the dangers of software piracy.

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