As a full-time CD and DVD pirate for the last five years I read your article with deep interest [“The Bootleggers” by Tasneem Paghdiwala, August 17]. I have found that my experience differs greatly from the unorganized and uneducated bootleggers you featured. I started pirating music in college and became addicted to the fast money and control it gave me over my work hours each semester. While my friends lost sleep working at Starbucks and retailers part-time and full-time, I was earning a full-time income working a few hours a day for myself pirating goods.
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Your bootlegger story pretty much sums up the experience of most urban bootleggers I know, and I have learned to live comfortably doing the exact opposite of those sad cases of ghetto entrepreneurs. They work at night in seedy locations and are content with $800 a month. Seventy-five dollars for a Friday is pathetic. I make that in one hour on Fridays. I make $2,000 a month working less than 20 hours a week. They charge customers crackhead prices and I charge more because I have found there will always be people who will pay for anything cheaper than the retail store. I also charge my customers more because I make it clear to them my time is worth more than five CDs or DVDs for $10. Because of my clean and neat appearance and sober lifestyle I have had only three encounters with police in five years, two of which only resulted in peddler’s license street violation tickets, which I tore up and ignored. I have never been locked up and the worst thing that has happened to me is a robbery at gunpoint in another city I tried working in two years ago.
Although your article was funny and entertaining, you really could’ve chosen some better examples of people who pirate for a living. Imagine writing an expose on prostitution and you feature the experiences of the $20 crack whore instead of the $400-an-hour escort. Piracy is growing and those guys you featured have an experience that certainly is not reflective of most of those who seriously engage in the crime.
