Recent articles on book piracy.

In Peru, from Granta.

On the Internet, from The Millions.

And in India and Bangladesh.  Plenty of piracy in Pakistan too. And why wouldn’t there be? Pakistan has a poor selection of books and they’re pretty expensive by local standards.  Same in Bangladesh.

Can’t publishers in Latin America and South Asia produce swift and inexpensive editions to compete with the pirates? That’s what movie distributors have done, selling cheap dvds of first-run films in Russia, and south and central Asia to beat the pirates to the punch.

Want to know how your country’s black economy compares with its neighbors? Check out Havocsope’s online database of the global black market. They follow it all – flesh, drugs, software, movies and books.

What does any of this have to do with Sudan’s historic elections? Nothing. But I hope to have a piece that subject published very soon.