New laws make software pirates creative

This may be to feed the gap in supply created by the government's rigorous battle against piracy, which has resulted in the country recently being taken off the U.S. watch list of nations with insufficient protection of intellectual property rights.

"On the retail end, the situation has improved quite a bit," Christopher Ng, general manager of Electronic Arts' Asia-Pacific region, told The Straits Times. "There are no longer a lot of shopping centers selling pirated software as blatantly as before."

Although pirated software and entertainment is becoming more difficult for consumers to find, the demand for original material is not picking up.

"On the consumer side," Ng said, "there is not much improvement. The supply chain has not really been broken up because people still go across the causeway to get the items."--Special to ZDNet News