Piracy in Muscat.

Well I was going to comment on my amusement last week when waiting in the departure lounge but I've decided to expand it a bit and talk about piracy and Oman. Of course I mean movies and games piracy, and not the other variant which the Somalians (as funded by the Israelis according to the Editor in Chief Essa Al Zedjali) are proving so good at.

Whilst waiting for my flight in the departure lounge, I looked up at one of the many flat-panel monitors suspended above the seating areas and burst out laughing when I saw that a movie was being played, in what looked like Windows Media Player. The name of the movie was The Wild, and the file title was The.Wild[2006]DvDrip.AC3[Eng]-aXXo.avi and for any doubters, a quick search on a torrent website nets this and pretty much proves that someone at Muscat International Airport is a movie pirate, and apparently feels brave enough to broadcast their bootlegged wares onto the public information display monitors!

I snapped a picture, and here it is:

And a close up of the file name:

So, what other sources of bootleg movies and games are there in Muscat? Well, there are the Al Fair car park guys, who shuffle around usually in the evenings, looking slightly dodgy with bulging plastic bags chock-full of dvds. They usually have 10 to a disk movies and want a rather shocking RO10 per disk, for something that costs less than 100bz to produce. There's the numerous shops in and around the Sabco Center, which will cater to both your movie, and your games console desires as well. And then there is Ruwi highstreet, where I fear it's hard to actually buy anything original! There are bootleg jeans, shirts, jackets, bags, belts, caps, movies, games, watches and even bootleg perfumes and aftershaves!

So, thats my take on the bootleg scene here in Muscat....

I still find it funny someone was playing a bootleg movie on the Airport's own tv systems!