The Danish Rights Alliance, in collaboration with the Danish Film Institute, the Ministry of Culture, Producer Rights Denmark and Biografklub Danmark Fonden, re-launched “Os Der Elsker Film” (“We who love movies”), an awareness initiative designed to remind consumers between the ages of 18 and 29 of the risks associated with piracy, and to direct them to legal sources.
The campaign has several key messages. One, that the movie industry is worth supporting, and second, that if consumers don’t pay for movies, jobs and talent will suffer. A third is that streaming and downloading illegal content has consequences, including the theft of personal content and data, the threat of malware, and the feeding of criminal enterprise.
Os Der Elsker Film is a media-rich campaign being publicized via social media, using known actors and personalities to communicate the message. “A good 70% of consumers of illegal content stream illegally on Facebook and/or Youtube,” said Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund, Director. “Therefore, it is absolutely essential that Os Der Elsker Film is visible on these particular media, so that attention to the consequences of illegal streaming hits the right target audience,” she said.
Citing 2022 research from Mediavision, Rights Alliance said that the number of Danish consumers watching TV and movies via piracy increased by about by 80,000 between spring 2021 and spring 2022; to 580,000 – which is about 13 percent of the Danish population between ages 15 and 74.
The Rights Alliance recently observed that the use of celebrities and media to promote fraud is on the rise, and requires “a dedicated effort across the media, rights holders, consumer organizations and online actors.”
For further information
Read the August 8, 2022, Rights Alliance press release, “Criminals prey on the content and credibility of the Danish media”
Read the August 22, 2022, Rights Alliance press release, “Increasing consumption of illegal streaming among Danes”
Visit the Os Der Elsker Film Web site
(The above are all auto-translated from Danish to English by Google Translate)
Why it matters
Os Der Elsker Film is an online resource that’s similar in spirit to anti-piracy public service and consumer education initiatives elsewhere in the world, including CTAM’s “Stream Safely” and ACE’s “Watch It Legally” Web sites, and campaigns by Creative Content Australia, and in India by a team comprised of CIPAM (the Cell for IPR Promotion and Management), in India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industries, in partnership with the Film & Television Producers Guild of India and Viacom18. All of these efforts are designed to be informative, rather than to scold or threaten.
But an analysis published in a July 2022 paper by two researchers from France’s ESSCA School of Management argues that anti-piracy messages have a counterproductive outcome; that piracy helps poor people, and that the threat of punishment actually “activate(s) a calculative mindset rather than an ethical one.” The paper proposes a methodology for composing anti-piracy messages that could be more compelling to consumers.
