Gizmodo: In an effort to combat rampant piracy in China, Paramount and Warner Brothers have begun selling legitimate DVDs there for only $3. And these titles are not some bargain bin Steven Segal DVDs either, rather new releases that are only two months out from their theater debut in the US. The $3 price tag is still over twice as high as a pirated copy, but the studios hope that customers will learn the value of the legal versions.

Lemme get this straight… the nation has piss poor control over their citizens so piracy runs rampant – and has since the 80’s* – and now they’re getting retail DVD’s for $3 and faster than we get them????

Maybe once “they learn the value of legal versions” they can explain it to us Yanks since we are paying $10-$20 per movie, $20-$40 for seasons of TV shows (that run in syndication) and $60+ for some box sets like The Sopranos. Right now? Right now, I’m not seeing this supposed value.

* and I quote a friend’s father who used to go to Singapore and Hong Kong all the time for business circa 1984, “Eh? Yeah, they have E.T. on VHS!** They have everything on VHS – you just have to ignore the subtitles!”

** E.T., originally released in 1982, came to VHS for the first time in 1988 (and one of the first priced around $20 – all new movies at the time were going for $90/tape, mostly to both encourage rentals and extort cash from independent rental stores (Blockbuster was both small and new at this point.)