… Killed Piracy (Well almost)

There was a time when pirated audio cds were the “in” thing. Left and right, you could see rampant copyright violations – from stores to tiangges, sometimes even people you know, who sell music compilations as a sideline.

Now, you seldom see pirates selling music compilations. The only pirated stuff I still see are pirated dibidis being sold in obscure places as Quiapo, or cardoor to cardoor salesmen.

The reason? Simple.

Because people can just download songs from the Internet!

On to the next victim…

… Killed the Encyclopedia Salesman

I still recall that there used to be door to door encyclopedia salesmen that went around, uhm, door to door on the streets of Manila.  These salesmen even had booths in malls, and they’d give flyers and brochures with heavy sales promotions like “big discounts”, “free bag”, etc.

It’s too bad that when I was younger, I didn’t know about time capsules or storing away these brochures for historical relevance. I mean, probably 20 years down the road, nobody would be using paper anymore, and I could sell them as memorabilia or something. Haha.

I also remember that during those wonder years, I would bug my parents about buying me a set of encyclopedia, and to my chagrin, they’d always say no. So during those days, I’d go to our school library to research for term papers, reports, and the like.

Kids these days would go to Wikipedia, or Google, to research materials for their reports. Heck, if a student has a high level of Internet sleuthing, he might even be able to find downloadable term papers.

I seldom see voluminous encyclopedias being sold in bookstores too. There are almanacs, “world” encyclopedias, but that’s about it. I guess it’s the sign of the times too, people just don’t like reading “nerdy” books anymore.

Anyway, Mr. Encyclopedia Salesman, rest in peace. It’s sad I wasn’t able to buy me a set before your passing.