I talked to Nandan this morning. Before I left India I packaged thirty dvds to mail to America. Nandan sent them out along in three packages along with a fourth package containing books. Today he told me that the piracy police brought the dvd packages back to his house when they came looking for me.
The dvds I bought were weird but legitimate for India’s standards. Dvds packaged in the same way as American packaged goods are not easy to find. There are music and movie stores in the malls there, and they are modeled after the American style of that store. Inside those places, everything goes for American prices because they get the American goods shipped from China to those places. I do not know who shops there, because in the same malls there are Indian stores where everything is packaged for Indian prices.
When I bought Indian games and movies and music, the cover art on the discs looked just like American. Sometimes it came in a jewel case or dvd box but often it just had the art – printed on a good printer, sometimes – put with the disc into a sleeve. A few times I found stores with limited stock of games for ps2 and xbox 360 that seemed identical to the American ones inside and outside the box, except for not having an instruction book. My dvd lot contained some computer games, some ps2 and 360 games, some movies, and some music
I have not fully questioned Nandan on this matter. I am curious as to the nature of the piracy police’s origins, how far my packages went before they came back, what it is that the police wanted. I assume they wanted me to bribe them.