The irony of that "You wouldn't steal a handbag" advert was the production team hired a composer to write the music under the false pretence it was only going to be screened at film festivals, but never told them it was going to be included on nearly every single UK cinema screening, VHS and DVD in the mid-late 2000's to avoid paying them a daft amount of royalties, and I think the composer took them to court for it.

it is still head-scratching how studios thought the FACT fire ad was acceptable to use on tapes for kids shows and family films

The simple Disney ones where they'd show you a cassette and there's simple voiceovers, like those 90s releases of The Lion King and Aristocats, good stuff, it does the job, you watch them so many times as a kid, you commit them to memory... but then there's "THE PIRATES ARE OUT TO GET YOU. DON'T LET THEM BRAND YOU WITH THEIR MARK..." Seriously, what the hell was that?

This was definitely a UK phenomena. I never saw so many elaborate sketches and short films about piracy. In the US all we had was the normal FBI warning.

imagining being an aberdonian offshore worker working months away from home on the north sea and in the small lounge room you wanna watch a film on the tiny crt but you can't as the vhs cannot be played on oil rigs

Don't forget that the "you wouldn't download" ad was made with stolen music

I was always confused about the Oil rigs thing. I once asked "How would they know?" Lol

I live in the US where our Anti-Piracy warnings were just the FBI and Interpol warnings. But however, we too even had the same “You wouldn’t steal a car” Anti-Piracy warning. We even had one that used footage from Casablanca

"Jeopardise future film production, destroy our video and film industry, and your future enjoyment" David Zaslav: "Hey, that's MY job".

Very interesting! I definitely remember the “You Wouldn’t Steal A Car/Television” warnings on a few Fox DVDs from the early 2000s, which also sometimes has a Not For Rental screen with a voiceover reading it - I own some of those DVDs. Speaking of warnings, remember the BBFC ones from the late 90s? (especially on Warner tapes)

Video piracy was a big issue in the late 1970's and early 1980's, there was a segment on BBC's Newsnight about video piracy. This led to the establishment of the Federation Against Copyright Theft.

I'd still be feeling happy even if there is an anti-piracy PIF on a physical media. Remember the "THANK YOU!" bumper from You Make The Movies in early 2010s 💿📀 of FOX, Sony, Universal & HiT Entertainment. Disney made good anti-piracy PIFs

The “Piracy, it’s a Crime” PIF legit scared the living day lights out of me, like it was super intense and felt like I was getting told off for pirating films.

Fuck, don't tell Universal I was watching The Land Before Time 2 on my offshore oil rig.

the pirated VHS copies I had back in the day where straight up blank tapes with the movie title written on the label and card sleeve. Your cousins were living in luxury with their plastic cases and printed labels! Luxury!

I would watch a KZfaq video on an oil rig.

I have the FACT 'The Pirates Are Out to Get You' PIF on a few Simpsons VHS compilations released between 2002 and 2003.

Some tapes and DVDs even had the Macrovision screen too

The fact you couldn't even "LEND" out your vinyl records, books ,CDs, Tapes , VHS tapes is laughable. I bought it , it's mine ! imagine if you couldn't lend your lawn mower to your sister because there was a big warning on the chassis ! LOL

The earliest I recall seeing these piracy warnings was the Warner Bros. one from the mid 90's, which informed me about piracy. It's not scary to me, but it is pretty informative on what happens when you bought a pirated tape. Though the Disney ones beat that because it also tells you that it could damage your VCR and the tapes are sold outside reputable retailers. The closest one that I find scary was the early 00's FACT warning, which I remember seeing on a retail tape of the Garfield Christmas tape, of all things. I was surprised they added that warning to the tape, considering it was a kids video and the warning may scare little kids. The mid 00's warning felt too over-the-top and feels like it would've belong on some sort of crime programme. I don't remember seeing the "Pirate Videos: Daylight Robbery" PIF as a child, especially since we no longer have a VCR, sadly, but I do remember watching it on KZfaq. It's pretty funny and memorable, especially with that guy selling illegal copies. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, No trains in it either. I suppose that's my fault as well" The warning still has a good message. Very interesting VHS review, and you have reminded me once again about my VHS discoveries in my childhood. Sweet job.

Never mind the Piracy look how fast her download was going 7:57

8:43 This was indeed inspired by real events in the late 80's with multiple instances in the US and at least one case in the UK of cheapo public domain distributors being too cheap to buy more blank tapes and would reuse older tapes for their cartoon releases, and newspaper articles at the time confirming kids watching a bad Bugs Bunny tape then it cuts abruptly to a R-rated horror film and in many cases, hardcore porn that the video duplication factory was also in charge of. True analog horror, and I'm definitely certain this PIF was inspired by those cases.

OK so I already put this as a reply to a comment, but I think its worth it's own comment... The reference to 'damage your video cassette recorder' ( 2:54 ) is sort of true. What it refers to is how pirate copies very rarely came on incredibly poor quality tape. Normally they would just use cheap duplicator blanks or store-bought blanks, but (and it seems to be more with older tapes) you would get blanks which contained low quality tape that had very poor formulations, and would shed their oxide coating all over the video and audio heads. In my experience these blanks were either Chinese, or possibly from the USSR (yep, that old). This of course would more or less totally ruin the heads until they could be deep-cleaned, which most people couldn't readily do with home cleaning tapes. In addition, some had abrasive qualities that wore down heads more quickly than normal tape, which has lubricants and other elements to protect the heads - this is a phenomenon that also occurs with low quality audio tape occasionally. My knowledge of this comes from my collection of about 6 pirate tapes, all of which I digitised, and two of which decided to dump oxide all over my transfer VCR, meaning I had to dismantle and manually clean the thing several times 😂

The resentment I feel towards being deliberately prayed on and frightened by some of these companies as a child has, in adulthood completely removed of any guilt whatsoever when it comes to the countless movies and shows i've illegally downloaded over the years. I in fact take great pleasure in it. They knew video copying would cost them a lot of money (but would not come close to ruining them) so instead of trying to lecture the adults, they instead opted to traumatize the next generation...Children

5:58 Paul Heyman doing the most random thing. This should have been on WWF and ECW video tapes.

The funniest part of this is the only people who saw these warnings were genuine viewers as this was always cut from the moody ones we used to get, the quality was always fine too.

Admittedly watching those PSA/PIFs, you can’t help but wonder if counterfeit VHS tapes really did ruin or damage your VCR player if you used them, and more so how. That FACT “pirates are out to get you” PIF/PSA was always so scary to be greeted with, when trying to watch What’s New Scooby Doo or something similar. 😬😬

Please don't buy pirate video tapes, or we'll have to pull the trigger.

The 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Anti-Piracy bumpers on DVD are better than these.

The amount of teachers who let us watch cartoons from tapes. nobody read the warning if their was one, the teacher might of even used the fast forward to get to the story, nobody wants to sit and wait threw the warning parts lol. Also if that hologram thing is a sticker we might peal it off and put it on something else for fun as it is a hologram after all.

Glad to know I’m not the only one befuddled by the oil rig inclusion on the MGM tapes. They were on stuff here in the states too. America typically a lot more subdued but leveraged the menacing idea of the *FBI* coming after you if you pirated something. We took the “You wouldn’t steal a car” video too, an international sensation lol. Though some Warner Brothers tapes had a Batman themed FBI warning that used to scare the shit out of me.

Lmao the 'Illegal Video Cassettes' hologram warnings used to terrify me, until I grew up and found an ironic charm in the ads and the legendary pirated tapes lol 😆 As for the Fox warning with the threatening voiceover, I better remember the Pathe version (same ad, different hologram) which was on Chicken Run, my favourite film 🤣

To explain the bit about Oil Rigs, it's important to remember that workers spend long periods of time living on oil rigs, as it would be impractical to ferry everyone to and from the rig every day. As such oil rigs have living spaces and amenities meant to provide some level of normalcy while workers are there. As such the idea of someone setting up a TV in one of their break rooms and playing a VHS on it isn't hard to imagine. That being said it is hard to imagine anyone seeing that warning in this context and feeling compelled to eject the tape.

Awesome video! I thought I was the only one interested in these copyright warnings as a young child lol 😁

As an American I never really saw these sorts of heavy handed anti-piracy warnings until the DVD era (and those were more against downloading stuff from the Internet instead of buying bootlegs). Most tapes would have the generic, silent FBI warning and that's it. Nor did I ever see holographic stickers on tapes, even on ones from companies like Disney.

You wouldn't download an oil rig.

5:09 Actually, it probably is accurate, I'm afraid. Because I remember when I was a child (maybe 8 or 9) my mother bought me Pokemon trading cards from a guy at a market, and it turned out that the cards were fake / bootlegs. I didn't know this until I went to school showing off my cards to my friends and they were shocked, and kept saying to me that they were "fake." Now that I look back at them, they definitely were fake, unfortunately, and keep in mind I live in a developed, first-world, English-speaking country just like the U.K. So yes, I think it is possible for an ordinary guy to just be selling bootlegs at a market. I don't know about movies, but definitely trading cards.

I remember seeing these as a kid Not on vhs since I'm not from the uk But I do remember seeing these anti piracy messages on KZfaq I do remember those you wouldn't steal a car video piracy messages from my pink panther dvds which the it crowd actually poked fun at Great video Fun fact there's a bootleg betamax of fantasia with the looney tunes short thar parodies fantasia from miracle productions with a hilarious message that says "mess with us and you'll be slapped with a lawsuit so fast your head will spin" How ironic since miracle productions made illegal betamax tapes of a disney film

Notting Hill musoc video for You say it Best When you say Nothing at all has a Guy trying to sell Bootleg Tapes of the film in. Yet he is holdoing a PSP looking machine showing video footage of the movie which was tech that could not exist when film was made. Yet ive never once in my life at any market or car boots in UK ever seen someone selling Bootleg VHS it was always CDR copies of PS1 games or DVDS instead.

My favorate is the disney one

O I L R I G S

I have some information regarding VHS piracy😂😂