Navigating the pirated seas... a place I just won't go!

CDs & DVDs and all that other stuff, yes, in China pirating is a widespread and terrible problem. All those intellectual property laws and cases and stories I learned in grad school have no meaning here. Case in point: I've got Slumdog Millionaire on DVD and our friend has Benjamin Button. We've got movies here seemingly before the release date sometimes, and in the middle of them, it'll say in the bottom of the screen, "Property of Universal Studios."

But as pirating is a disease in China, it is safe to say that it's a epidemic in Vietnam. How reckless is it, you ask? Josh bought a whole bunch of Belle and Sebastian CDs for less than a dollar each. The covers are normal, and they're in plastic sleeves vs. CD cases, but when I looked at the actual disc itself, it's nothing but a Memorex CD that must have been burned on a computer.

Seriously ghetto!

This is where I draw the line, though: As if that wasn't enough, there are a load of bookstores. I was so happy because in China, English books are fairly expensive and relatively limited in selection. So probably the 2nd bookstore in Hanoi we went to, I finally noticed and realized that, What the heck? They books are NOT REAL! They're only photocopies of the actual thing!

Some of them can look convincingly real, though. Josh can't spot some of them, whereas I can as soon as I touch 'em. Be it one look at the cover, poorly cut edges, faded words. But even I don't catch them all, I think.

I refuse to buy books in this country (Vietnam) now, for this very reason. Every city we've been to, the fake books are everywhere. I swear like, there's a secret vault in this country where only 1 copy of each book hides. And the rest that are on the shelves are all fakes!

So SAD!