Pirates of the New World

Ever since I picked up my PSP Ive been going through various game review sites to help me decide what games I need to pick up next. My limited salary and the price of the games (ranging from Rs 750 to Rs 1500, the exchange rate being $1 = Rs 45, you do the math) meant that I can pick up a new game once a month. I was at Landmark (a large retail chain that stocks everything from books to perfumes to music players to consoles) and in the process of deciding which game to pick up when I started talking to this total stranger about PSP games. He was suggesting a couple of games to me when he asked me "Why dont you mod your PSP and pick up the pirated ones?" "Havent got around to doing that" I replied instictively before he left. And then I thought to myself - Since when did piracy become such an accepted norm.

We can all pretend that it doest exist but the honest fact is that it is rampant everywhere. In India everybody freely downloads mp3s and movies. So do I. We dont have a facility for buying our music online (like the itunes system) and even if we did I doubt too many would do so. I like most others of my age group have seen more downloaded movies on my laptop than I have in theatres. This despite getting my laptop just over 2 years back. Its filled with around 20 gb of mostly downloaded music. And I have a bunch of downloaded movies. Its not that I dont go to a theatre and watch movies and make sure the producer gets his moneys worth. But say I want to watch one of my all time faves The Fast & The Furious on a sunday afternoon. I havent found the DVD in any of the large retail shops Ive searched in. If I were to pop into a tiny shop selling pirated DVDs Im a 100% sure I would find the movie and its 2 sequels as well. Moser Baer is doing a lot to fight piracy the smart way - price movie DVD so cheap that people wont mind spending 100 bucks if its a movie they like. Still I dont think we will ever get close to eliminating piracy in all forms. And as long as you & I keep thinking - Hell, as long as people arent copying my software/music/movie content for free, why should I bother?", we wont keep moving towards a pirate free world of the digital kind.