Category "A" CD's

At the core, the question is whether moral conscience exists in a capitalist system.

The original story is given at Peacehall.com, which I will summarize in the following.  Adult entertainment movies on compact discs is a huge market, and quite legal in the United States and Europe.  It is true that the technology is commonplace enough that anyone can buy a CD/DVD reproducer and set up shop to crank them out.  That is fine if you run a small shop that sells pirated disks.  For example, in SCMP on March 18, 2005 ("Four nabbed in raid on illicit video disc factory" by Clifford Lo):

A family of four was arrested by customs officers yesterday after turning their home into a factory producing pirated video discs.  The parents, aged 49 and 54, were accused of making illegal copies with 13 computers in their Shamshuipo flat, while their two sons, 18 and 24, did the daily deliveries, according to customs officials.  The flat in Lai Chi Kok Road is less than 300 sq ft.  The family-run workshop operated up to 16 hours a day and could turn out 8,000 discs a day, customs spokesman Roger Lo Kit-ming said.  Investigators said the factory had been operating for about a month and the family had been making as much as $120,000 a month.  Thirteen computers worth about $350,000 and about 10,000 pirated video discs were seized. 

If you are a producer who needs hundreds of thousands of disks on short order, then  you cannot afford to use consumer equipment.  You need a place with a high-speed production line that can press and package hundreds of thousands of CD's or DVD's on short notice.

So where would you go?  Where does that capacity exists?  It turns out that Taiwan accounts for 80% of all adult entertainment CD's and DVD's produced in the world.  Last year, Taiwan exported 64 million CD's/DVD's valued at NT$4.1 billion from more than 30 manufacturing factories.

Unfortunately for Taiwan, things are not going well at all recently.  One factory owner complained, "The government here intends to charge us with spreading pornographic images which are proscribed by law, so all the clients have gone over to the Koreans instead."  Another manager said, "Our equipment are idle.  We invested hundreds of millions, but we now have no idea what our future will be."

Inevitably, the rationale is being offered:  "These adult entertainment movies are legal in the United States and Europe.  We have strict agreements of confidentiality with our American and European clients such that none of these movies will ever appear in Taiwan.  So why not let us perform this economically significant service?"  Indeed, some legislators have proposed the invocation of a special exception to the law on pornography.

Where does the type of rationalization stop?  Here is a progressive series of historical situations:

• Cigarettes are legally sold everywhere today, even if it has been scientifically established to kill people.  Either I could manufacture and/or distribute them, or someone else would.  So why shouldn't I?
   
• With their gunboats and artillery, the British Empire has obtained the rights by force to sell the opium planted in East India to China.  Either I could sell them to Chinese citizens, or someone else would.  So why shouldn't I?
   
• Now that the Japanese Imperial Army has taken over eastern China, they will need a puppet government to administer the occupied territories.  Either I could be their agent, or someone else would.  So why shouldn't I?

It is a slippery slope indeed, all the way down to death by hanging for crimes against humanity.