The Book Pirates of Peru

[daniel_reetz]

Saw this super-interesting photo essay on book piracy this morning.

[rob]

Wowzers. One has to wonder at the reasons piracy so endemic. As the article points out, it's not cultural, and probably not price-driven (although I disagree). Certainly there is the translation service the pirates provide.

[daniel_reetz]

Totally. The slideshow is a little light on information.

While I was in Russia, one of the most startling things was the huge number of advantages pirated media offered. For example, if I bought a DVD, it would be subtitled or dubbed in Russian -- not true of the "proper" version. Another advantage was in software. It was possible to buy a CD with Windows XP on it, which would not only install itself unattended, it would also install a working antivirus, Firefox, an alternate file manager, the Office suite, and a host of other programs... all properly Russified.

Another thing I was introduced to were these CDs full of MP3s. You could, for example, buy any artist on earth -- "vse albomi" (complete discography). The MP3s were all excellent quality and had proper metadata, album art, etc. Considering the cost of internet access there these media represented incredible added value.

[Antoha-spb]

Dan how much did you pay for internet in Obninsk?

I'm asking cause i don't remember when it was the last time i bought a disc with music or software (although i do collect DVD with movies that i really like)

In St.Petersburg an unlimited wired internet access now costs around US$20 per month. Internet bandwidth is some 5Mbps at this price, but 'local' peer-to-peer traffic (unlike torrents) has no speed limitations. With a p2p soft like StrongDC++ just anything from "Avatar" to movies with Audrey Hepburn can be found and downloaded in a couple of minutes at no extra charge.

As to translations - it now vice versa to what you point. Here in Russia I cannot find any legal software that is not localized. Navigating through translated menus and windows I try hard to guess what it was originally (as sometimes one who translates doesn't fully understand the purpose of the app). In MS Excel even formula names(!!!) are somehow translated into Russian. The only source of original-language software is the piracy, again.

Some licensed content just comes late - i have already seen House MD up to don't-remember-which episode of the 6th season, but there's no way to buy a legal copy of this film so far AFAIK.

[daniel_reetz]

I lived in Obninsk (and Moscow) for the year 2006. In Obninsk, my first service provider was Maxnet. They operated over some kind of 10mbit network -- and indeed, the local net was fast and basically unlimited (it was some .06 rubles/megabyte or something). Service through Maxnet was paid via plastic cards with scratch-off numbers on the back. I usually bought 500 ruble cards.

I can't remember the exact amount because it was listed in some nonsense units ("у.е") which translated to Rubles somehow. I paid a base fee to keep a line of service open, I think that was around $40/month. Then traffic was charged by the megabyte for downloads. If I remember correctly, uploads were free. After searching my emails, it looks like download prices when I arrived were between 2 and 5 rubles/megabyte, and then by the time I left (December 06) they had dropped to around .8 rubles/mb (for web traffic).

One thing is clear -- NDSU paid for half my internet access for the first 4.5 months of the year because I was still working for them over the internet. I had to send them an invoice and proof of purchase. The total dollar amount was:

Eight 1000 Ruble cards
(and currently 1,000 Russian rubles = 37.1058 U.S. dollars)
so [8 000 Russian rubles = 296.8464 U.S. dollars]
Twenty-Nine 500 Ruble cards
so [14 500 Russian rubles = 538.0341 U.S. dollars]

For a total of: 834.8805 dollars over 4.5 months.

Now, in Obninsk, there is ADSL with unlimited traffic. My friend Alexei wrote me in March of 2008 to tell me all about it. He said it cost 1200 rubles/month from another provider,Telekom. I can't find their website.

I had an apartment in Moscow for about 4 months, my first ISP was a coffee shop across the boulevard from my 8th floor apartment:
http://www.fakeproject.com/Ikea_WiFi_Booster/

That didn't last very long because somebody started offering DSL there. I was one of the first people to subscribe to ADSL, and frankly, I was shocked when it worked so perfectly and my Vonage phone worked and everything worked and I could download anything I wanted again without fear of it costing me all my money. Unfortunately I can't find a record of who my ISP was... was it Virgin?... Beeline?... Megafon?... someone else?... Anyway it was around $65 a month, and was something like 128kbps download speeds.

[Antoha-spb]

Impressive (about wifi napkintenna).

You definitely have a writer's talent )