Would you buy them?

Part of our regular life here involves pirated goods. Fake Prada. Fake Kate Spade. Fake Crocks. And lots more. Certainly fake movies. Next to our local bakery is a movie store. You can find newly released US movies for 7 yuan, or 1$. Prince Caspian, check. 21, check. About 1 week after the movies are first released in the theater in the US, you can find your first round copy in our little local store. What baffles me is that everyone and their dog knows that all of these movies are pirated. I've seen police raids come along and clear out market movie sellers, but this little neighborhood store must have friends in high places.

Let's say you COULD buy the copy for $1, but your conscience tells you that perhaps you should hunt down a legitimate copy. So you go down the street a ways to our large French-owned grocery store chain, Carrefoure. These are kind of like Wal-Mart, but about double the size, and mostly full of Chinese stuff. (There is a half-aisle of Western imports...spaghetti sauce, cheerios, alphabet noodles, and a few other things...) Anyhow, you find the video section and look for the same title...There it is, for 25 yuan, or about $3.50. Something tells you that these must not be legit either. Or are they? It does have some kind of seal on it...

So you drive around town, looking for a store where you can pay more money to make yourself feel better. You're thinking it should cost about $15, but you can't find them anywhere for more than $3.50. (Though a "stupid foreigner" might pay about 8$ for the same pirated kind at a market designed specifically for milking money out of those who don't know any better.) What a dilemma!

So what do you do? Since you know the "Warner Bros. sealed $15 kind" is not available, do you buy the $1-definitely-pirated-kind? Or the $3.50-probably- but-maybe-not-pirated-kind? Or watch no movies at all. I'm taking a poll. You can answer anonymously, if you don't want to be hauled off :)