“Life's pretty good, and why wouldn't it be? I'm a pirate, after all.”

“Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

I had a wonderful weekend. First time in a long, long time I did not have it fully booked with stuff to do, so I was left with quite a significant amount of time open for anything. What did I do? Games!!

I'm not much of a game-playing citizen, but I do enjoy my share of the activity. This weekend I continued my game of Onimusha, which, after a slightly unconvincing start, has turned out to be quite entertaining. It's an adventure-game much like Final Fantasy series, except the fighting is in real-time and less magic oriented (at least so far).

Also, me and Chi watched the new Mr. Bean movie, which I had my doubts about but it turned out to be quite entertaining. Also, I've been watching the Black Adder series lately which I've always found much more likable of Rowan Atkinson's series': Black Adder is concentrated on verbal humor and the episodes have clear plot lines (mostly not very sophisticated, though), while Mr. Bean concentrates mostly on funny faces and slapstick.

I bought the Black Adder series (all 4 seasons and the short movie) for HKD 70 at a local store. The package of course being an illegal copy that normally would not be allowed in Hong Kong. The thing about Hong Kong pirated products market is that the vendors use a number of loopholes to escape responsibility. With movies and series, the loophole is importing the stuff from Taiwan, where the copies are made under Taiwanese license. I don't know how it actually works and how that makes the products 'legal' in HK markets, but that's how my colleague explained it. The point is, the products are still copies of the original, but through some weird process they can be sold here legally ... Or at least I think it's legal.

Of course it's still possible to find old-fashioned plain copies from HK as well, but usually they are in the shadier areas where good citizens, such as myself, don't venture into. Not very often anyway.

I don't know what loopholes they use for other licensed products such as toys, or products based on famous cartoon characters, or watches and purses/bags because they seem to be everywhere and I can't believe all of them are official products. However, the HK government is much more effective in its fight against IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) infringements that it's hard to believe they would allow such an open sale of these products if there was any questions of legality in play.

The funny thing is, however, that when walking in big tourist-crap centers like the Ladies Market, Temple Street, or Stanley Market, you hear the words "hello sir, copy watch? copy handbag for your girlfriend?" all the time. If a police went there undercover with the aim of finding illegal products (if that's what these are) it would take maybe 10 minutes to catch a hundred vendors.

Oh, wait. For the sake of exaggeration let me exaggerate a little more:

... it would take maybe 10 minutes to catch a least a gazillion vendors.

But I really don't know what to make of the products. They are copies, everyone knows that. But why aren't the police doing anything about it? Are they legal through some loophole then? I don't know. I know HK government has a policy of non-intervention to market activities but I also know they don't like things that tarnish their polished image (ie. piracy). And of course there's the international law to consider which HK is bound to enforce as strongly as deemed necessary. While Mainland China struggles with piracy, the same problems shouldn't arise so severely here. For starters, there is no manufacturing of pirated products here (at least in large scale) and that means the products need to be imported from China (or Taiwan). Secondly, the market size and the scope of business for pirated products is much more limited here, making it a smaller problem - yet one the HK government has sought to end. Following the international law should not be a problem here. So, I still believe it is just some loophole in legislation that will be, eventually, fixed.

And to redeem myself a little, I must say that I never bought anything copied except DVD's. And of even those, most were bought under sheer duress.

The problem with the DVD markets in HK is that many official Asian productions are sold without English subtitles. Such being the case with especially many Anime-series I've wanted to buy. So, since official versions with English subtitles are absent from general market, I've been forced to buy "Taiwanese versions" which come with subtitles I can understand.

And to all the besser-wissers, yes, I know I could order online - but I don't want to!

Oh, the game Onimusha I'm playing... I didn't buy it from an 'official vendor'. And my PS2 is not really qualified for the official warranty either.

"We're ready to set sail, all the cannons need a priming. We're thievin' balladeers, a gang of cut-throat mugs, to fight us off, you won't need guns, just jolly good earplugs! A pirate I was meant to be, trim the sail and roam the sea..." - The Curse of Monkey Island