Chinese Fire Drill, But in Thailand

We tend to talk about Asian theft of intellectual property in the abstract, as a set of statistics or underlying principles. On the ground, it's just like any other kind of war on crime. While most bootlegging goes on in China, counterfeit software and entertainment is just part of life all over Southeast Asia. Michaelooi explains what it's like to be in a Panang DVD shop when the cops raid, looking for bootlegs.

Like the rest, I was also clueless until I saw a few of the DVD shop operators skedaddled towards the entrance and started to pull down the sliding vertical door frantically. There were approximately 8 to 10 doors and they were shutting their outlet down real quick.

At that moment, I began to realize what's going on. Without further procrastination, I quickly dumped the DVD's I'm holding and dragged Emily out from the shop - along with the rest of the fleeing patrons. When we reached outside the outlet onto the mall walkway, a thunderous noise of doors being slide down simultaneously can be heard ... and all of them were DVD outlets. And if you've already guessed what it was, yes, that's right - it's a DVD raid.

If Senator Orrin Hatch gets his way, maybe we can enjoy this same kind of thing in the United States, except it will be the iPod police.