The first time I saw it on the street-corner vendors, the price was around $10 AR pesos or $3.15. Now that everyone who wanted to see it has already seen it, its price has went down to $4 pesos - which equals $1.26, €0.92 or £0.62 at today's exchange rate.

Pirate Movie as sold down under

Not only that, but it's common to see "mobile vendors" announcing these movies loudly - as do the hot dog and soda sellers - at the main train stations and aboard the trains taking commuters back home at the end of the day. In a country where unemployment has fallen from 31.3 per cent five years ago to 8.3 per cent and where the economy has been booming, there's really no excuse for this level of rampant piracy. The price of $4 is cheap even by Argentina's standards, and one has to wonder really how much profit are the sellers making.

One street seller, pictured with my smartphone three years ago

In the interest of investigative journalism *cough*, one of these CDs founds its way to me. I wanted to analyse how these pirate movie CDs are duplicated, what kind of printing is used, etc. First, the obvious. These CDs are mass-produced, they don't look like someone in his basement is doing this. The paper artwork looks like 1200DPI, professionally printed output. It's not a cheap colour Xerox copy - as was until now seen on street DVD vendors stalls.

Back view, notice the high quality printing

The paper artwork is obviously ripped from the DVD release from Spain (as it has to be Spanish language), with references to audio tracks available in Spanish, Catalan and English. When you open the self-adhesive plastic sleeve, you find a surprise: a CD-R instead of a DVD. The CD is not a cheap generic or second rate brand, but Philips 52x media "Philips Four Seasons" sold in 50 piece bulk packages.

Again, the cost of each of these Philips CD-R-r blanks is AR$1 - £0.15 - without shipping and including 21 per cent VAT, that is one-fourth of the sale price by the street vendor. Then you have to add the cost of the professionally printed paper artwork. Recording a CD-R takes time, even if you have a bulk copier. Not to mention the cost of electric power, and the manpower to put each CD in its plastic sleeve, cut the paper artwork, etc. I can only think that perhaps these CDs are purchased for other legit purposes like information archival and then "disappear" from a private or public organization. Clearly, if the pirate(s) get the media for free, that makes the equation more believable.

Inside: a 52x Philips CD-R media

Tech details
When I inserted the unlabelled Philips CD-r into a Helios H4000, it refused to play it. I immediately thought the "movie" was a rip-off, that is, a blank CD-R sold to unsuspecting customers. When I inserted the pirate movie in my Philips DVP642 and then a DVP5960, it played it flawlessly. Yes, it wasn't a scam but a pirate movie - I guess the pirates need returning customers!. The movie seems to have been ripped from a preview - or released - DVD. The Spanish translation is native South American Spanish, without the usual Castillian vocabulary on Spain imports.

KVCD format plays in most, but not all, the DVD players
It plays at full screen width but with two huge black horizontal bars
Here, the DVP5960's "info screen" showing encoding bitrate.

The format of the movie is not VCD but a variation of it, which allows longer movies to be ripped into a single CD-R, at the expense of two big black bars above and below the movie. So you actually lose 1/3 of the vertical space, more than when you watch a widescreen movie on a 4:3 CRT, yet this allows pirates to fit a complete movie into a single CD-R disc instead of the two it took previously. The format is dubbed "KVCD" and is a non-standard VCD that deviates from the original specs. Of course there's no subtitles or alternative soundtrack, so in that sense the pirates are lying. Hey, if you can violate law one time, I guess lying to their customers promising subtitles or alternative soundtracks is a minor concern.

Conclusion
What started as an underground market is now in plain view for anyone to see. What is surely true is that these street vendors couldn't operate without the police turning a blind eye. I witnessed in several instances a few vendors operating in plain view of the local police. The public suspicion is that some of them must be on the take. But, truth be told, progress has been made and a couple of pirate movie sellers who were often seen in street corners near this correspondent's home seem to have disappeared.

DVD / VHS movie rental shop two years ago. It's closed now...

The availability of these cheap copies seems to be hurting even legit business owners like the small DVD rental shops, which rent movies for about AR$4 a day -the price at which the pirates are selling you a movie that you can keep. It is a shame, because the small mom-and-pop shops often deliver a better selection than the local branch of the huge and cold Blockbuster giant. µ

L'INQS
Montreal Theaters nab movie pirates with Night-Vision Goggles
Dogs sniff out counterfeit DVDs
BBC: rampant piracy threatens PC games
Argentina better placed to face market swings
Argentina's July primary surplus jumps 23pct yr/yr
First Simpsons Movie Pirate Copy Tracked to Aussie Man

See Also
Recordable CDs and DVDs branded equal to piracy
Argentina ends 2006 with record-breaking e-figures
Google opens regional HQ office in Buenos Aires
Intel creates software R+D centre in Argentina
Amazon.com sells Pirates' Booty
I have a problem with that Andrew Thomas