Finally - Revenge of the Sith DVD in Pakistan

According to Pirated Star Wars hits Pakistan, you can finally buy a DVD of the newest installment in the Star Wars series. The movie would have been available much sooner, but there was a recent crackdown in copying facilities.

Three of Karachi's estimated 11 replication facilities were raided by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) earlier in the month.

The owner and manager of one facility were arrested and more than 300,000 pirated DVDs were recovered from the three plants.

Still, sales within Pakistan are projected to be about 50,000 copies in the first two weeks. However, the raid has made shopkeepers nervous. For the risk of being caught, prices are up over 30%, bringing the cost of the newly released "Revenge of the Sith" to just over $2. Additionally, customers can also buy a DVD containing all five previously released episodes for another $2. So, for about the price of a soft drink at the movie in the U.S., you could buy the entire "boxed set" in Pakistan.

I guess the disparity in the prices between the legitimate version and the pirated version really highlights the value of the intellectual property of the films.

In other news, apparently FOX [is] issuing takedown notices to Sith downloaders.

We saw it coming.  BayTSP’s claim that they could track BitTorrent file swapping, the recent MPAA threats targeted at Revenge of the Sith downloaders, and an overall increasing presence from the dark side have been a few clues.

For comments on this article, see this Boing Boing post.

And now some free legal advice: Don't download "Revenge of the Sith," and don't buy a DVD of the movie before it is released by the studio. If you already have a copy: absolutely, positively DO NOT copy it.