June 28, 2001; Page 6B

Wacky packaging gives knockoffs away

By STEVE FRIESS
Special to USA Today

BEIJING - The entertaining part of buying Chinese knock-off DVDs and CDs isn't the entertainment at all. It's the packaging.

In particular, pirated entertainment products in China often feature quirks that make them comical. In addition to rip-offs of whole albums by popular artists, the stores here overflow with unusual compilation albums that infringe on the intellectual property rights of several US companies at once.

One hot seller, "America's Greatest Country Hits" includes songs by non-country artists Richard Marx and Gregory Hines, while albums that purport to contain Christmas music frequently throw in the "Titanic" love theme "My Heart Will Go On" so there's an excuse to use cover art of Leonardo DiCaprio's chin burrowing Kate Winslet's nape.

A recent "The Best Movie Hits in the World Ever! Part I" production included songs by the Carpenters and Celine Dion that never appeared in films. Plus, the liner notes of that album offer bizarre lyrics to the peaceable Simon & Garfunkel classic "Scarborough Fair" that include, "Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather/Generals order their soldiers to kill."

A pirated DVD of 2000 Tri-Star film "The Wonder Boys" includes English subtitles that inexplicably refer to Michael Douglas' Professor Grady Tripp not by his character's name but as the "auspicious emperor of leather." One DVD box of "The Fugitive" features images of star Harrison Ford from his film "Six Days, Seven Nights" but a description of "A River Runs Through It" instead. Ford did not appear in that film.

The box of a Spanish-language Penelope Cruz film, "Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health," carries this piece of unsolicited advice from an anonymous writer: "You must see it because you'll have a good time and it is worthwhile. It only have a little defect. The duration is very long, I think."

It is unclear why the packaging is so strange, although many people have theories. One theory on the rampant mispellings - hello, Whitey Housto and Madamma - is that counterfeiters use computer scanners to transfer the images and words from the legitimate material onto their screens in order to manipulate it. Scanners are notorious for incorrect letter recognition, but it is unlikely counterfeiters are hiring a team of editors to check.

As for the twisted lyrics, the most sensible explanation may come from a Beijing shop owner who would only give his surname, Li.

"Sometimes the legitimate entertainment company creates a Chinese version of the product with a translations of the lyrics in Chinese to help Chinese audiences know what the song or film is about," Li said. "The bootleggers may try to translate the Chinese back into English, which is difficult because each Chinese character is a concept, is several words. Or maybe they just have someone make it up. I do not know."

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