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~ -- If you want to share pictures, use the calendar, or start a vote visit http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/blind-side To leave the Group, email: blind-side-unsubscribe at smartgroups.com -- Ann K. Parsons email: akp at eznet.net WEB SITE: http://home.eznet.net/~akp "All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wander are lost." JRRT
