Years ago you couldn't rent a movie from Blockbuster without having to fast-forward through an annoying commercial telling you off for even thinking about pirating a TV show or movie. Basically, this commercial, seen below, would make sure to make you feel guilty about pirating even if you hadn't thought about it. 

But what if we told you that instead of deterring people from piracy, the commercial actually pushed people to pirate movies?  According to ladbible, a study of those early '00s efforts to curb video piracy - with that 2004 public service commercial at the centre of Hollywood's crown on this - looks at piracy through behavioral economics.  In other words, they analysed how movie, music, and TV studios could have spent so much money on a campaign that went on to fail so damn epically.

The biggest reason the commercials failed is due to the fact the pirates didn't think they were doing anything wrong, the study claimed.  "Information technology seems to facilitate the moral disengagement of infringers, who do not perceive themselves as thieves," the study said.

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“For instance, the terms used by infringers frequently feature a form of euphemistic labelling ('file sharing', 'fighting the system' and so on) and some pirates rationalise that unlike common theft, they do not deprive the owner of the copyright properly."  The study claimed that these public anti-piracy campaigns failed because they actually encouraged pirating, and kept it at the forefront of the public mind.

All the commercial did was make people roll their eyes over the stupidity of it all as they pressed fast-forward.  It was such a dumb ad it actually became one of the first memes at the dawn of the internet. It became so infamous it was even parodied in pop culture, such as The IT Crowd. Read more on this article by following this link.