Sam wrote:
> 
> >> I've got my own attitude to pirating. I grew up in Saudi Arabia,
> >> where there were no originals, only Pirated copies of everything:
> >
> > ...I grew up in Bahrain, right next to Saudi Arabia... I didn't have
> >any problems finding the original... -_-; (life must suck in Saudi...)
> 
> The standard of living was very high, but no copyright laws and the
> strictest customs officials in the world made getting original things kinda
> hard.

 ...life must have been tough for non-religous muslum in Saudi....
(unlike Kuwait, and Bahrain, where the laws were a bit more civilized
(modern)... ^_^;)

> Videos is a good example. If one brought in a video from outside, customs
> would have a look through it and, if they found anything they considered
> offensive (ie any female flesh whatsoever, even thighs etc) it was
> destroyed. Same goes for books, clothes, hell even toys.

 ...That's saudi... (use the Cause-way (bridge) between Bahrain and
Saudi... anbd buy things there ^_^;
 
> We managed to bring movies into the country by bringing in Laser Discs
> inside record LP sleeves. The customs officials would wave them through,
> thinking them music records. Dumb asses.
> 
> All videos one bought in Saudi were all copies of copies of something
> filmed with a video camera in a cinema outside (no cinemas in Saudi, who
> knows what men and women might do together in the dark like that!) and then
> cut to religious discretion and mass copied and sold. Jeesh.

 ^_^; That's the "rules" for countries who has islamic teachings with in
the law...
 
> >> videos, music, hell sometimes magazines. Every video was a copy of
> >> a copy of a copy and were almost unwatchable. All the music was done
> >> by companies like 747, and hence the quality was apalling.
> >
> > ...videos, music, magazines, newspapers, heck, even FOOD I was able to
> >get the ORIGINAL Japanese.... (even Japan airlines flew into Bahrain
> >once a week ^_^;)
> 
> Bahrain didn't have the power to tell any country they wanted to to get
> f****d and then have that country crawl back in apology. ;-D

 ...??? (miss-typed...? above...?)
 
> Despite that I had a great childhood and look back on Saudi with much
> fondess. Weird really. ^_^

 ...tough laws... tough regulation...
 (kuwait... if anyone lived there before the war...) might be one of the
best places to be around ^_^;

					Kenji Shimizu