While living in Malaysia, I certainly remember the barking I constantly heard: “real fakes, genuine fakes!” Who could forget that? The street vendors were proud to have their “fakes,” those authentic fakes, the “geniune fakes,” etc. When was the last time I went over a friend’s house and actually saw an “authentic” movie???

Where is all of this piracy coming from? Er, what about those folks who download stuff off of the internet? Folks that don’t want cable, can’t pay for it, and so forth? You know, cable shows and stuff that one has to pay a premium price for? All of the downloaded movies shows, etc. is transferred off on to CDs DVDs or shifted on to a hard drive that someone has named “bigboy,” the motherload of personal archives. Piracy is “on the ground.” It is a mode of resistance, but it’s also speaking to the immediacy of information, how people get information and why is it they find it so important.

Going back to your reference to “real fake, genuine fake”, etc…. it remeined me of this post in the NYT by Daniel Okrent regarding journalism…(I know I’m reaching here but indulge me):

“It’s only a newspaper. It eventually comes to this: Journalism itself is inadequate to tell this story. Like recorded music, which is only a facsimile of music, journalism is a substitute, a stand-in. It’s what we call on when we can’t know something firsthand. It’s not reality, but a version of reality, and both daily deadlines and limited space make even the best journalism a reductionist version of reality.”

So what about the DVD and the movie itself? Are they just all “versions” in the first place?

P.S. Talk about replication - KL has a winning hand for replication - they managed to build an immense mall in the shape of a pyramid (sphinxes and all) - palm trees and all - with a huge ice skating rink inside.