Pirates!

Over a cholesterol-laden lunch today, we (fellow blogger Jimbo and other colleagues) talked about the piracy of intellectual property. All of us are guilty of this unlawful activity at one time or another. When I worked in Kuching, my "loot" was impressive - French and Spanish films otherwise not showing in a cinema near you, Japanese animation, preciousss box sets of LOTR and Futurama and tonnes and tonnes of audio CDs. Look, I'm not proud of this. When the authorities started to clamp down on piracy, I stopped going to my favourite haunt for weeks. I would picture myself being caught on film fleeing the scene when officers raid the premises, which would then be shown on national TV. My patients would see me and exclaim, "Itu doktor!" Scary thought, powerful enough to suppress my need for more cheap discs.



I sort of stopped buying when I came back to this part of Malaysia. Somehow it just didn't feel right anymore. If you buy pirated VCD/DVDs, you're dealing with criminals and funding their activities - haven't you seen the TV ads? The guys in the ads were so disgustingly sleazy and loathsome, I totally buy it.

I promise, Borat and The Holiday would be my last discs...well, all right, maybe the complete season one of Heroes, Transformers and Shrek 3 too!