One very common sight that I normally don't notice anymore are street-level art studios where shifts of painters crank out stacks of copies of famous western art--the Mona Lisa, all the impressionists, Kandinsky, etc. These two examples made me stop and smile, though. The Bansky copy suggests multiple levels, since a defining quality of his work is how temporary it is.And as far as I know, the new Batman movie isn't out yet. If it was, I would see vendors selling pirate DVD copies outside my hotel. But the publicity photo of Heath Ledger taken during production and that has since been attached to all his obits has already become iconic enough that it's being copied here in oil on canvas.
Pirating creative works and clothing designs is so common here it's almost impossible to buy something that isn't pirated. I've never seen a legitimate CD store, but stores selling illegal copies for about 60 cents each are everywhere. If you wanted to buy a real La Coste shirt, Levis jeans, Adidas shoes or North Face backpack, you couldn't find it, but trashy copies are available on every corner.
Similar story for books. What I notice there is how the vendors selling cheap photocopies of The Quiet American or In Retrospect by Robert McNamara is that it's the same limited selection from each vendor, that it's the same selection as when I was here a year ago and that there's no overlap with the government-run bookstore. For example, Thomas Friedman's books are popular at Fahasa but are not sold in pirated copies on the street. The CD and DVD selections, in contrast, stay fresh. Given that, and how none of the books are really "black market" in the sense of being contraband, I get the impression that the pirating comes with a lot of official approval.
-Robert
