Pirates of the Barbary Coast Revisited
In yesterday's post, I indicated that approximately 75% of all cds and dvds circulating in Morocco were pirated. I confess that at the time, I thought the number rather low and those fortunate few who know my true identity have expressed equal disbelief. In my defence, the information came from Communication Minister Nabil Ben Abdellah - so really, my only sin is gullibility. Shame on me.My colleagues and I are of the opinion that this number was low-balled by the Minister in order to save face and, after considerable deliberation, feel that a more true representation of the situation in Morocco is thus:
94.8% of all cds are pirated
100% of all dvds are pirated.
Pace Mr. Ben Abdellah.
posted by Cat in Rabat ( كات في الرباط) at 8:00 p.m.
4 Comments:
Arrrrrrrr!!!
It's nice to see the bootleg DVD's or videos that have the image of the low battery power indicator visible on the screen. Which, of course, is from the Video Camera that is being focused on the TV screen to "tape" the movies.
What I don't understand is why are there no other alternatives in some countries? Why don't the film and music companies distribute legimate copies to these countries?
If Morocco or the like only have or only offer bootlegs for sale, then how can they start to fight or control pirating?
Sounds like byronb got a dvd made by Brady (shameless Seinfeldian reference).
I bought stunningly good pirated dvds in Turkey but I kind of had to because ... wait wait, I must adjust my halo to write this with anything resembling creditability ... because Turkey taxes imports heavily and my need for good movies from Amazon couldn't be met on my salary.
In a move that reveals the level of my intelligence, I then moved countries with all of these pirated dvds in my luggage without thinking too much on the possible outcomes of this action.
Enough .............
The government must be loosing craploads of dirhams from these pirates. For that reason alone, you'd think that they'd be courting Sony et al.
I've been lucky with my dvds - the copies have all been pretty good but I have been stung on the absence of an English voicetrack.
When I leave Morocco, I'll go bury them in the desert before I go to the airport.
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