interesting article

[Ann Parsons]

September 22, 2003

http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=107609,00.asp


Hi folks,

Just thought this was an interesting article.  

Ann P.



September 22, 2003

http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=107609,00.asp


The locals tell of the massive pirate ships sitting beyond the 12-mile
limit, loaded to the bulkheads with millions of dollars of high-end
disc
stamping equipment. This is the source of the fabled DVD-9 brand of
supposedly bootlegged DVD movie. You can get pristine first-run movies
not
yet released in the US. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kuala Lumpur.

Trying to comprehend what's going on when you step into a commercial
mall
and confront what one assumes are pirated movies and software out in
the
open selling for amazing prices is hard. That's what you find in
Malaysia,
considered by many to be the nexus, or vortex, of all international
piracy.
And we're not talking about kids selling bootlegged copies made at
home-although, as you'll see, there must be a lot of that going on too.

This is no lightweight town, but an intense rough-and-tumble
metropolis,
with its incredible skyscrapers, typified by the monstrous Petronas
twin
towers (the world's tallest structure since 1998) and the nearby Menara

Kuala Lumpur, with its revolving restaurant. The place is kind of a
cross
between Shanghai modern and New Orleans funky with an energy level that

contrasts with both that of boring ultramodern neighbor Singapore and
the
nearby wild and disorganized Jakarta in Indonesia. The place is an
eye-opener for Americans.

I first heard about the DVD-9 brand name last year in Hong Kong after
returning from Beijing with some laughable but slick-looking bootlegs
that
were of the New York camcorder-in-the-theater type sold on the streets
of
Manhattan for $5 a pop. DVD-9 refers to the approximately 9 gigabytes
of
data that the two layers on one side of a DVD contain. No DVD burner
can
make these things. They have to be stamped out by machines. With DVD-9,
the
entire package is so slick, you cannot look at it without wondering
who, or
what, is behind it. You immediately think of the Asian Triads-organized

crime. If that's the power behind DVD-9, then some dangerous genius is
running the operation, since the brand, which is synonymous with
quality,
now rules all of Asia. In fact, there is nothing to indicate that these

disks are anything other than Hollywood products fronted by Hollywood
to
eke whatever it can from Asian markets, where buyers are used to paying

nothing for the stuff. You have to wonder who is really behind all
this.

The disks sell for from $2 to $4, and there is obviously some money
being
made, with nobody paying royalties to the artists. These DVDs are
mostly
first-run films and not yet officially released. They have all the DVD
outtakes and special features. Are the sources inside the studios?
Seems to
me that with some ploys, the sources could be traced. But except for
the
stories about the ships offshore, nobody knows anything. In Kuala
Lumpur,
the slickest shop sells these discs for $3.50 and lets you look at them

through players to check the quality. Name a movie, and this place has
it.
The discs are formatted with no country codes, so they play
universally.
And there seems to be no use of Macrovision copy protection.

DVD-9 has become so desired that a lot of vendors of crummy discs are
using
DVD-9 stickers, trying to convince users that their discs are "genuine"

DVD-9s. In fact, the brand name is clearly printed on real DVD-9
packages
and on the diskette labels without using stickers. By the way, a friend
of
mine in Jakarta says that while the US talks a big game about copyright

violations, the local American diplomats load up with DVD-9s when they
head
back to the States.

More interesting and less organized is the bootleg or pirated software
scene. In much of Kuala Lumpur, everything you'd ever want is available
for
$1 a disc. Some elaborate discs cost around $3. The products you can
get
include Windows, Office XP, all the Adobe products, and more. The
locals
will tell you flat out that they cannot afford expensive software, and
then
they tend to go off on anti-Microsoft rants. I've thought about this
and am
totally convinced that the piracy is tolerated because it keeps users
on
the Microsoft teat even though the illegal copies generate no income
for
legitimate publishers. The approach is like fighting a forest fire with
a
backfire. In this case, the forest fire is Linux. As long as Southeast
Asia
and China can get Microsoft Office XP for $1, they are not about to
switch
to Linux anytime soon. Stop the bootlegging, and then economics alone
will
turn the whole area over to Linux in the blink of an eye.

To test this thesis, I asked three crowds of computer users about Linux

during three different speeches in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and
Jakarta.
How many people used Linux, I asked? One lone guy in three cities
raised
his hand. One!

Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large

The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a person only tells them with all his might  ~Mark Twain~




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			Ann K. Parsons  
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