The INQ goes on the trail of Chinese pirates

Spring Festival has already started for some, and everyone is getting ready. Spring festival is the biggest holiday in China. A combination of winter vacation and Chinese New Year. A celebration that lasts over one month for many. What do people do for Spring Festival? They visit family, enjoy being with friends, relax from work, but the biggest pastime is shopping!

Now there are more things to shop for than ever in China. China is now rolling in valuable consumer goods. Right up there on the top of most shopping lists are consumer electronics, especially computers. Of course if you have a new computer, you'll be needing some software.

This Spring Festival is sort of special. Not only is the year of the Golden Pig coming, but the government in Beijing has announced much success in the nationwide drive to end piracy. Computer software piracy, music and video piracy, and copying and selling books and magazines from the west.

There have been some great spots on TV here. My favorite was staged in Beijing, right on the steps of the Great Hall of People's Justice. A huge industrial shredder roaring away, the Security Bureau officials cramming armloads of pirated DVDs into the chute, and a spray of tainted shredded plastic raining down on the front steps. Exhilarating.

That was last year. Now, according to the Peoples Daily Online, the official government press, "Masses of pirated products have been seized, sales of certified products have risen and business owners are now much more aware of IPR protection in China thanks to an intensive anti-piracy campaign, a Chinese official has announced."

The trail starts
So I thought this would be a good time to go in search of what had been previously easy to get, plentiful, and cheap: computer software, videos and music. Although I am not Chinese, I still have Spring Festival holiday. Not too much to do. I speak fair Chinese. Could be fun.

My course seemed easy enough. I live in Shenzhen, on the Pearl River Delta. A suburb of Hong Kong. One of the most progressive and fastest-growing areas of China. Start with the least likely places, like the 'official' computer markets and bookstores, then work my way to the alleys and backstreets. Hard to hide amongst the Chinese here, as I am 191cm tall and go almost 20 stone, but not much need to be very covert. Besides, if I do have to go to the back allies to find anything, size could be an advantage.

I enlisted the aid of my Mongolian wife. She is about a quarter my size, and a very fast runner. She was going to take secret snaps of what we found. A couple of days before we set off to the big computer market, about a mile away, we rode the Metro train (subway) into town to get in a little shopping of our own.

Before we made it the two kilometres to the bus stop to get to the Metro, we came across our first chance to buy DVDs. New Hollywood blockbusters. Some software. I didn't buy anything, but did get a picture of the shop and proprietor. Too bad the flash on my camera went off, as it caused the seller to launch a string of invectives at me as I strolled on towards the bus stop. Something about my mother, but in the local dialect. I don't think he was wishing me well.

We made a few metres further down the road. More chances to buy recorded media of questionable authenticity.

Get 'em, coppers!
Directly across from this purveyor of evil was another identical operation. But this was different. There were two policemen surveying the wares. Aha! Caught red-handed! This boy was going down, I could feel it. I could smell it. "Get ready to take some action shots!" I said to my fleet-of-foot little photographer. Ambling over to the seller's ersatz place of business, I expected to see the brown humus waste material contact the air circulation device. Avast ye pirates! No. The police were shopping for DVDs. My wife used her good judgment and did not photograph the police shopping at that stand. She said it would most likely end in tears for both of us if she did. Smart girl.

We passed eight more portable places of business before we made it to the bus stop. They are all set up about the same. They all have more or less the same titles, and the prices are identical (note that if you do want to buy from them, don't photograph them first). Movie VCDs are ¥4 (about 26p), movie DVDs are ¥5 (about 33p), and most computer software is ¥8 (about 52p). So far, at his point in our adventure, it seemed there were more places than last year to buy these goods. By a rough guess, three times as many.

The real investigation: Part one
Next day we decided to go to a few of the large media sellers in the city center. The first two we visited seemed to pretty much on the up and up. No software, but loads of current movie releases at prices you would expect. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Next up, in one of the biggest shopping areas in Shenzhen (Lou Hu District), we came across what we were looking for. A large place of business, with racks and racks of VCDs, DVDs, and some software. Prices were the same as the street vendor prices, but they had everything. Here is a picture of the front of the setup. The whole store is about four times what your can see in the photograph.

I took the picture at the front of the shop, passed the camera off to my small photographer, and strolled away to circle around and make sure nothing happened to her. She took this inside shot.

I rounded back to the front of the store as three employees were starting to accost my wee photographer. We made good our escape and went back home. They were yelling as we left, "You can't take pictures in here! You can't take pictures in here."

Real investigation: Part two, the computer market
Past the dark and sign-less doorways is the local computer market. It is mostly a wholesale market, but they do have some retail shops. One of those shops is for software.

I expected they would have only genuine software, because it is such a public place, and very well known. I buy computer hardware there often, but have never bought software. The same software shop on the third floor has been there for over a year, it has a huge open door, so it must be legitimate. Well, so one might suppose.

Computer software, about 52p for anything. It's all Windows stuff, and I'm not a Windows user, but it seemed like there was anything I could think of there. I grabbed the first 10 titles that seemed like what I might need. No pictures taken in the computer market, as that is where I get my parts, and I do not want to piss them off. We took our booty and headed home.

This is cute. On the way home we saw another outdoor media shop. Note the plod in the foreground, and the media shop in the background. Very clever to hide it where the cops would least expect it to be.

And so, here is my haul. I forked out a grand total of £5.24 for these titles.

A bad close shot of the Windows Vista...

Conclusion
I asked the guy running the software shop where I could find a copy of genuine Microsoft Windows. I told him I needed it for something important. He really had no idea. "Maybe Shanghai. You might be able to buy it in Shanghai, but it will be very expensive." That was his best guess.

I went round to the Lenovo shop in the computer market and asked the tech there where I could buy a copy of genuine Microsoft Windows. He had no idea. He told me the systems he sells come with an OEM Windows disk. He did offer to burn me a copy of XP OEM if I had a blank CD with me. These people really are quite helpful.

From what I can tell, pirated media is everywhere and there is very little alternative. There is a market, and there is a supply. People want this stuff and they buy it. Heck, even the cops shop for it. Sort of strange how out in the open it is, and yet the government can't seem to find it.

Even if I did want to pay 75 times the price of what I can get it for, nearly everywhere, there simply is no source for the real deal. It is nowhere to be had here.

As an aside, I did get one of the local sellers to open up to me a little. He said that he had been 'raided' once. Last year. The cops took one box of his DVDs. One box out of 15 or so. It was during the time of the "big IPR crackdown."

I don't see things changing here any time soon. µ