Even before The Matrix Reloaded opened in China's cinemas in July, Liu Ying had watched it twice.
Like many Chinese fans of the popular Matrix science-fiction franchise -- the latest is called "Hacker Empire" in Chinese -- Liu said he watched the movie in his home, on an unauthorized or "pirate" DVD copy.
The pirated DVD appeared soon after the film's American release earlier this year.
"It wasn't the best copy," he said, "but I've been hanging out for the Matrix sequel. I also figured if I watched it first, it would make more sense when I saw it in a cinema."
Liu, a 23-year-old salesman from this southern Chinese city, is one of millions of Chinese consumers whose appetite for cheap pirated films, music and software is vast and mostly uninhibited.
China's galloping market economy has long run rough and ready over international copyrights. But industry executives and analysts say that in recent years piracy has become even more rampant, aided by the spread of the Internet, and computer technology that allow technology-savvy bootleggers to outrun the government's periodic crackdowns.
A pirate DVD store above a restaurant in downtown Guangzhou makes the extent of such activity abundantly clear. The store, which can be entered only after a telephone call to the proprietor, Li, is two air-conditioned rooms with stacks of thousands of pirated movies.
Besides recent Hollywood blockbusters like Matrix and the latest installment of Harry Potter, there are 1960s French new wave classics, Japanese and Korean romances and gangster films, and gruesome horror and cult films, including Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The discs sell for US$1 to US$3 each, depending on the quality of the copying technology used.
The customers, most of them college age, pore over titles and line up at Li's counter with several films to watch over the weekend. "Quality is guaranteed," Li says as one customer leaves. "Just knock next time."
Throughout China's cities and towns, mom-and-pop pirate shops like Li's serve a vast and growing market. China has about 20 million DVD players, and by the end of 2006 the number will grow to 42 million, according to David Scott, an analyst with the magazine Screen Digest. China also has 74 million of an earlier generation of disc players that use a less sophisticated form of encoding, a format called VCD.
While some authorized copies of DVDs are available, the Motion Picture Association of America estimates that last year more than 90 percent of the DVDs sold in China were illegal copies.
One reason for the ubiquity of pirated films (and music) is price. Typically, pirated discs sell for a fraction of the price of legitimate discs, while the range of choice among the bootleg versions is much larger.
A regular customer in the pirate stores, Fu Jun, a 24-year-old accountant with a taste for science fiction films, explained that for him and many young Chinese, attending a cinema is a rarer, more expensive experience than buying pirated films and watching them at home with friends.
Price matters
While a DVD player can be bought for less than US$50 and a pirated DVD sells for about US$1, a trip to the cinema can cost US$4 to US$10, he said, adding that the difference means a lot to young people earning only a few hundred dollars a month. "I guess we should consider the legal aspects of piracy," he said, "but students don't have the money."
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