Don't Copy That Floppy

About

Don’t Copy That Floppy is an anti-piracy video created by the Software Publishers Association (SPA). Originally distributed on video cassette in 1992, the SPA has allowed non-commercial copying of the video, so when video-sharing sites such as Google Video and YouTube went online in the mid-2000s, the video was uploaded and went viral.

Early Video Sharing

• On April 17th, 2003, a nostalgic-synopsis of “Don’t Copy That Floppy” with a link to download the WMV file was posted on the site Ninja Culture Classic

• On July 24th, 2004, another link to download the “Don’t Copy That Floppy” WMV was posted to the GeekNewz forum.
  GeekNews Forum post with complete rap transcript

• On May 6th, 2004, the first instance of “Don’t Copy That Floppy” appeared on YTMND.
  http://dontcopy.ytmnd.com/

Popularity

*Although there isn’t enough search traffic for “Don’t copy that floppy” to show up on Google Trends, there is a smaller amount of traffic that shows up for Google Insights for Search.

*Interest in “Don’t Copy That Floppy” has been steadily decreasing since 2004, which is as far back as Google Insights data reaches. Note that the Geeknewz posting occurred during a downward fall of search traffic for the video.

Further research into the video’s popularity from 1993-2003 is neccessary in order to understand the spread of this meme. It is likely that it experienced a fall into obscurity at some point, but this is not immediately apparent given the limits of our current data. Though according to Google timeline it was most popular in 1992-1994 when there was a piracy boom.

Based on data alone, we can only assume that “Don’t Copy That Floppy” has been remotely popular since at least 2003, generally falling there after.

“Don’t Copy That Floppy” was uploaded to Google Videos on November 19, 2005.

In March of 2006, another instance of the same original video was again uploaded to Google Video, but for some reason that month marked the highest peak in recent years. It may have something to do with this article on Ars Technica.

Derivatives & Remixes

In May of 2006, a higher quality version of the orignal “Don’t Copy That Floppy” was uploaded to Youtube. This would inspire the creation of a number of video derivatives.

Drunken Tiger Style – May 31 2006

Don’t Copy That Spaghetti: 2009 (Youtube Poop)

Doný Copy That Floppy 2 Trailer