Two related articles about the lack of respect for copyrights in Asia that caught my eye today:

via Slashdot:

“Apparently Japanese TV and bloggers have just discovered Disney’s theme park in China, where young children can be part of the Magic Kingdom and interact with their favorite characters (like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Seven Dwarfs). The park’s slogan is ‘Because Disneyland is Too Far,’ and there’s even an Epcot-like dome. The only problem? Disney didn’t build it, and they didn’t authorize it. What’s more? It’s state-owned!”

and

via Ultrabrown:

Bollywood rips with style. Why lift an obscure melody when you can steal chartbusters which everyone knows? It’s like that crappy Akshay Kumar flick, a phrase which exists as a redundancy, which ripped the climactic scene from Crash, on the theory that nobody would notice it’s from the Best Picture winner at the Oscars.

Chakraborty is apparently the Babe Ruth of stealing tunes. This guy has a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to his lifts. There’s his Gangster megahit ‘Ya Ali,’ which Chakraborty claims is completely different from the Arabic song which inspired it — ‘Ya Ghaly.’ There’s the hit song ‘Shikdum’ from Dhoom, a copy of Turkish singer Tarkan’s ‘Sikidim.’ And there are more than 20 other songs on that list.

But Chakraborty thrives in a system which pats him on the back and keeps him rolling in guitar picks and muscle shirts.

There’s even a site (http://www.itwofs.com/itwofs.html) dedicated to copied Inspired Indian Films Songs (Eye-Too-F-S get it?)

On a more original note, here’s a rather interesting and surprisingly accurate map of Online Communities by XKCD: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities.png