A poster worth 1,000 words

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I was in New York last week and saw the MPAA’s new poster urging people not to buy counterfeit discs. Dunno if anybody reads posters in the subway, but I have to say, I love this.

The ads also urge people to dial 311 to report bootleggers, nearly 80 of whom have been arrested this year just by New York transit cops. Now if they can just get the folks selling discs in and around the stations to adopt this labeling system.... OK, OK, many bootlegs are recorded in empty theaters, with sound taken directly from the earphone jacks for the hard of hearing. So the quality often is better than the poster suggests. And yes, we can debate whether New York loses more jobs to DVD piracy than to, say, generous tax incentives for film and TV production in Connecticut and other states. But you’ve gotta respect the absence of righteousness in the messaging.