Sunday 27 September 2009

Piracy Party?

Having lived around the corner of China, there was always an attention for pirated and copied stuff.

Though in the last years Hong Kong has cleared the streets from pirated dvd's, music cd's and software. It is still available, however way less than say 3-4 years ago. The same counts for any other branded product.

Just returning from a holiday trip we needed to pop out to the shops from some basic things. Now in the same complex are lots of small shops housed. I walked past it the last few times, but decided to check some of them out.

Within a few meters of eachother there are like 3 cd/dvd shops located with crazy collections of old and new movies, classic and filmhouse, sitcoms covering US, Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.

People openly shop for the latest editions to their collections to kill their sunday afternoon. After the choices are made you hand them over to the shop assistent, who willingly puts them in a player. Just to make sure you are happy with the quality of the dvd and to assure it is a working version. Prices are crazy...like 1/2 a USD for 1 DVD!

I missed the latest Harry Potter in the cinema's.....however they adviced me not to buy it....as they quality was bad.

It is interesting to see the whole world falling over China and Hong Kong about pirated stuff where as in other south east asian countries the business is thriving as well. And....if I am right the movies here are cheaper and possibly better quality. And..shops run openly.