Pirated music
One of the things we noticed soon after moving to Italy was the obvious lack of copyright protections. You will see openly displayed on street corners in all the larger cities vendors selling bootleg goods with designer labels for everything from purses to watches. The other big sellers are movies and music; poor quality copies made on standard recordable CD or DVD discs placed in a plastic sleeve with a poor quality copy of the original labeling. These sell for a fraction of the price offered in stores and from what locals have told us they are big sellers amongst Italians.
Related to music we regularly hear English language songs in stores and bars. In addition to original bands you will hear many poor remakes of original songs; many times the English is so bad I can not tell what they are saying. The general lack of copyright protection here for foreign music and movies makes for a stark contrast to all of the Napster and other media stories I remember relating to music and movies copyrights in the US.
One of the things we noticed soon after moving to 
2 comments:
Bryan, you and I had an exchange some time ago about not having receipts for meals, etc. Read Art and Barb Live in Italy for 2 March 2008. This is what you want to avoid and to not encourage in visiting tourists.
Art and Barb, and their gracious host, had an unfortunate experience that I doubt any of them anticipated.
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