“All is fair in love and war, now it is sellers and showrooms!” All of us have walked into showrooms after months of gushing over a new gadget, or finishing painful board exams, or after getting your first paycheck. We tend to visit over and over again just to get a peek at the device before it’s all yours. And India is a money conscious country, where every single paisa matters. We’ve done that countless times. Every single showroom, that’s demoing tech gadgets like the phones, tablets, laptops and huge televisions, should have some demo content. We were just curious to know, where the demo contents come from. And here’s what we found.
It’s 2014, and right from the internet bandwidth to the size and quality of the media that’s available for download are increasing. We’re in an age where websites are being taken down by governments all across the world, to prevent piracy and reduce damage to the content owner. The countless acts and measures being taken to reduce piracy and bring an end to illegal downloading. There’s the PIPA act, SOPA act, and a million more. While these acts might look like they’re for good, some think that acts like these are killing the freedom of speech online. The best example would be Aaron Swartz, who killed himself in the war between government and internet acts.
When literally the whole world is under fire for the media piracy, the people (staffs to be precise) in most showrooms [if not all], are indirectly promoting pirated content. When we landed in some of the tech showrooms recently, to quickly check what software and media files are inside the demo machines, the data in these machines were literally the same as the ones you could find in the internet cafés in remote areas of India, where the cache and data is not cleared after the user leaves the place.
Demo machines are put out there to show the customers what they’ll be getting when they open the box, these machines must be completely pristine. But the happenings are contradicting. Demo machines usually have pre-defined media files and software installed, to give the customers an idea about the experience they would get when they buy the device. These machines issued in sole purpose of promoting the product, fall prey in the hands of the re-sellers or by large the showroom owners, who literally abuse it as a device that is used for browsing and to download data.
Wonder what is actually there in these devices? There is always a Torrent client running at the back, utilizing the bandwidth that the higher management provides to give the users an experience of the product. These showroom machines, have been downloading tons of media from the internet, in the background. And the worst part, the media that they download, and run on these demo machines, are left un-deleted, thus letting any customer who walks in into the showroom to play the latest MP3, that are available on the market, and also some latest movie songs and clips that are available on the popular Torrent websites.
What media is in there?
We walked into different retail stores in the city, as well as some in other metros of India, and we managed to get some screenshots of the content that is being downloaded or is present in these machines.
Here’s what we found in the iTunes library of a major retail store in a mall:
And, the Downloads folder:
The worst part about all these pirated media is that, they still have the watermark printed in their Album Artwork. The best example is this, where a famous Tamil song, that is capable of attracting some customers is being played. The best part, it was downloaded from a site that allows piracy:
We are also trying to get the screenshots of the torrents that are being download in these machines, and you can expect loads of images (Gallery) in Part-2 of these series.
So, why is this happening?
Once we learnt that these piracy related issues are literally getting promoted in the showrooms, we wanted to find the reason behind these. And ultimately, the reason we got when we had a general chat with these showroom guys, was actually not surprising. All that they said was that they ‘personally’ wanted to listen to these songs which they can transfer it to their mobile devices or computers, and listen to them, share with their friends and family.
That being said, our team sat down with some managers of the store to discuss about this situation, and the answer we got was a shocker. One of the biggest gadget showroom’s manager in Mumbai, was ‘proud’ to acknowledge this issue, and surprisingly, he never found that as an issue. “Internet is open for all. And it’s the webmaster who should take care of these things and not us. If the content is available on the internet, what is stopping people from downloading it?” was the answer we got. He did not stop with that. When asked about the content that customers see when they’re checking out the demo machines, he says, “Well, we have really not thought about it, and we would never really see this as a issue.”
Though piracy is an issue that sees no light at the end of the tunnel, it takes a whole new form when demo machines play pirated media. The privileges that come along with the Demo machines are being violated for selfish motives. Showroom people download pirated files from unauthorized websites and make use of them during the demo sessions thereby misusing company allocated budget.
The customers also have the privilege of asking the demo guys about the websites from which you can get these songs, or you can even ask their ‘help’ to install cracked or unauthorized apps on a Mac running Mountain Lion, where the unsigned app installs are not allowed by default.
Well, this is not just the beginning of piracy. This, is the peak of piracy.
This post is a product of the collaborative efforts of Swaathi K, Preethi K and Aswitha R of 4CAST.
Coming up next: Are you sure that your ‘new’ computer is actually new?
This is a three-part series, exposing the state of demo machines in Indian tech showrooms