Pirated Movie Vendors Busted

Pattaya is one of the world capitals of pirated movies. The opportunities to buy copied DVDs of even the most recent Hollywood hits for 100 baht are all around you, from movie-filled-backpack-laden folks who walk from bar stool to bar stool, to market vendors with thousands of titles, to street-side stalls in locations from the most distant Sois out past Sukhumvit Road to semi-permanent large operations with alphabetically-arranged catalogs right on Beach Road. The police drive by them and walk by them on a regular basis and — trust me on this — they don't do anything.

However, should a vendor have the audacity to put a pirated Thai film up for sale in his booth or stall... then you can be pretty sure that person has only minutes of freedom left before the police, the super-secret Property Rights Special Forces Team, and the governor of Chonburi himself, will swoop down and crush the evil pirateer before he can steal a red penny from a Thai film maker. (Air support via Apache attack helicopter may or may not be present for the takedown, depending on wind conditions.)