It's common knowlegde that in Asia piracy is on it's highs. While in the United States and Europe piracy becomes more and more a thing of home users and proffesional piracy seems to become a thing of the past, in Asia it's still daily business.
Where else can you buy the latest movies and software for never more then 4 dollars ? But it's not strange, while the salary of an average worker in Asia is less then in Europe or the US, prices of electronics are almost the same.
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Local pirates have even come up with ways to give their pirated software seemingly legitimate serial numbers, Morris said. In other words, if you buy a copy of Adobe Photoshop, there is a strong likelihood that you could then register it to get legitimate updates.
Nearly every software title, film and album is available on the streets of this city, which itself is a backwater compared with Saigon. Windows XP sells for 25,000 VN ($1.67), the same as Red Hat Linux. Windows Me is cheaper, but it doesn't sell well. "Buggy," said a woman who ran one of the stores. A disk containing 35 music-compression and recording applications goes for 35,000 VN ($2.33).
Norton appears to have a strong edge over Symantec in terms of market share, and Visual Basic looks to be the toolkit of choice. The folks at Macromedia should be glad to know that Dreamweaver is incredibly popular too.
Music abounds as well, although it's a little more out-of-date. Most stores feature artists such as Louis Armstrong, The Police or Van Morrison.
Yesterday night I also saw a small newsitem on CNN that showed they sell modified Playstations (Play copies/backups, and are region free) in 'normal' shops over there.
Source: Cnet.com
