i am in fact a filipino very much asian and very much a fan of piracy.
i got em all, pirated dvd's and dvd players, vcd's, my console's even modified to play pirated games, pc games, you could find guys selling pirated stuff everywhere, from sidewalks to huge malls. yea and it's not just cd's clothes, watches, perfumes, just about everything, and yes its hard to tell the difference.
the thing is that pirated stuff cost a lot less, but they're quality is less than that of the original, but who cares anyway.
and the great thing is that the foreign companies who are getting ripped of from all the piracy don't care too much, because they consider south east asia too small of a market to even try and get rid of these pirated stuff.
and from experience piracy doesn't cause prices to go up, the local music scene here is really suffering from cd piracy, and guess what happened? they actually lowered they're price 40% just to compete with the pirated cd's