This past weekend I attended the Baltimore Comic Con. This isn't all that surprising since I am a rather large geek. The con itself wasn't what I expected but that turned out to be a good thing. I went to the Con expecting it to be a smaller version of the New York Comic Con (which I also attended) where there was a large section devoted to games and gaming. As it turns out the Baltimore Comic Con was aptly named as the show was focused almost entirely on comics. Almost.

In the back corner of this con there was a booth. This booth was rather large even though the square footage wasn't. For most of us this booth is well known and expected. To some this is the booth we look forward to seeing when we attend conventions. And to some like my girlfriend this booth was completely unknown and shocking. I am of course talking about the “bootleg booth” aka the Star Wars Holiday Special booth.

Ahhhh yes, the Star Wars Holiday Special booth. This is the booth where you can find bootlegs of all sorts. From the boring “One Night in Paris” to the getting dangerous adventures of “Darkwing Duck.” These masters of the bit torrent have everything. They had piles of disc's that claimed to have every NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. game ever released. And they even had a Mac disc upon request! Frankly, I doubt I'm telling you anything new here except being able to request a OSX version. But to me the most fascinating thing about this whole thing was my girlfriend’s reaction to this booth. She just couldn't believe the runners of the booth were allowed to be there. Yes she very nearly bought the complete Daria on unlabeled DVD-Rs (not even a sharpie disc number!) but she was just completely shocked by the booth, and looking back on it she was right to be.

Why are these obvious pirates allowed to be at these cons? I think we geeks should be ashamed to have these booths at our conventions. These booths are full of pirated content and thievery. At one point and time these booths were the point of conventions. Helping people trade and buy their favorite shows that were on the verge of being forgotten. Without these booths Star Trek may have faded into memory in the seventies. But that was before DVD and every show under the sun got at least its first season box set. So why do we still allow these booths at our conventions? If these booth owners had a brick and mortar store or even an online store they would be shut down almost immediately. Shouldn't it be the same in conventions?

Yes, it should be. These conventions are not the streets of Hong Kong. Instead of encouraging bootleg vendors to show up at these conventions we should be encouraging the content makers themselves to be selling us the very same things. I want Season 2 of Exo-Squad more then anyone else but I will not buy it bootleg. I much rather buy directly from the studios then the mullet rocking creepy guy who wants to give the kids free candy.

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