Went back to the indian DVD and CD sellers at the end of the amsterdamse poort shopping complex in Amsterdam southeast today. Looks like as if they have scaled back their DVD selling operations a bit (their Bollywood DVD’s still sell for unbeatable €2.50 each though). The stall also sells CDs with hindi film songs and all kinds of Caribbean, Urban and African styles even though the CD selling business ‘is not what it used to be before everybody started downloading the tunes’ (according to the owner). Despite the rampant downloading of our times you can still get your CD’s the old fashioned way and some of them have really interesting copyright notices:

in english this translates as: ‘The sale of illegal CD’s of Shifa Asgarali in Suriname is strongly prohibited. All rights of Asiactics Music & Movieworld also belong to Shifa Asgarali. Please don‘t download…. Our culture will be lost… ‘

Sounds to me as if the good Shifa Asgarali does not really care if his CD’s are pirated and sold outside of his native Suriname but the shopkeeper tells me that this is probably more an expression of naiveté . He thinks that Shifa Asgarali (who lives in NL) believes that people outside of Suriname still buy physical CDs which is obviously a bit of a outdated perception. According to the shopkeeper all CDs in suriname are unauthorized copies and as a result this note is a waste of cover space….