I bought what I thought was a legit copy of The Mission on Amazon (from a secondary seller), and it turns out it was a copy (with “Media Asia” emblazoned prominently across each and every frame). I am sure the seller wouldn’t have knowingly sold a bootleg, or they would eventually get kicked off of Amazon. But who knows where their supplier was getting their goods from? Because the quality is better on an original release, and I also don’t really want to knowingly support organized crime, I try and buy original DVDs. Sometimes its not as easy as it seems.

Even centres with relatively smaller Chinatowns here in Alberta in Edmonton and Calgary had at least one store selling legitimate product a few years ago but they have vanished and only the bootleggers remain. I talked to the operator of one store (Hon Sing) at their closing sale, and at that time the illegal downloads of Cantopop and Mandopop CDs had put them out of business.

I confess that I did pick up some illegal DVDs at first, particularly as that seemed to be the only easy source of Japanese and Korean material, until the increasing poor quality of the subtitles and my conscience turned me off. I confess to being a bit conflicted, because often the prices for legitimate DVDs from these markets can reach over 30$ (Canadian, not that the currency difference is much any more). That’s a lot to gamble if you haven’t seen the film.

There are occaisional outcries in the press about bootlegging, and some coverage of police raids, but only of Hollywood product. The bootleggers appear to be able to operate openly and even rent space in pretty large malls without fear of prosecution, as long as they don’t show the Hollywood product.

I sure wish there was something we could do about it. I fear that even your sponsor will be driven out of business if we don’t.

@dvdjamm — I haven’t seen any fake Blu-Rays that have the actual Blu-Ray case, although I do see an occasional DVD-sized case (with the cardboard slipcase over it) that say “Blu-Ray,” but those are obviously bootleg DVDs. Their Blu-Ray bootleg packaging hasn’t gotten as sophisticated…yet.

@TheMcGuffin — Yeah, I think the imbalanced ratio of bootlegs to official releases was what surprised me the most.

It’s really sad because the US is one of the few places in the world where most people would rather buy an official release over a bootleg

I always end up importing the movies I like on Blu-ray for ridiculously high prices afterwards so I guess that takes away some of the guilt.

And about Tai Seng editions - I thought I saw a Black Ransom bootleg before, but it would be easy to understand why the shops would be afraid of selling US licensed movies on bootleg. Tai Seng is located in SF afterall.