When I came back to Vienna to settle down with my family, I had to prepare myself to be able to look for a job. As a first step, I decided to take all the 7 exams needed to obtain the ECDL (European Computer Driving License). I studied and went to the exam for the first module. It was a multiple chose test about computer essentials. The questions were very easy and I finished in half of the required time. I gave the test paper to the examiner and went out to wait for the result. He came out, called my name and gave me the test, saying: „congratulation you passed the exam.“
I took the test and looked at the only mistake I made. The question was: if you buy software license, on how many devices are you allowed to install it?
A. 1 B. 2
C. 5 D. „As much devices as you like.“
Well, now after living 12 years in Europe I can only laugh when I think back, because my answer was „D“. I really thought that if I buy software I can install it on as many devices as I want, but really, I had a good reason to think so.
Most of the software we used in Iraq were copies of copies of copies. I hardly remember seeing an original floppy, or later a compact installation disk. I’m sure we had one software key on thousands of computers in the country. As if „copyright“ was interpreted into “the right to copy.”
I don’t think anyone really bothered to think about it. No one would consider copying a CD as robbery. It was just common because long before software was copied, music tapes were also sold that way. We went to a record shop, gave them a list of songs, and an hour or two later we picked our cassettes up. If it was a really good record shop, they had originals and always made the copy directly from it. One could get almost everything from Arabic songs to classic music, operas and the newest international pop and rock albums. It was a little problem when I went to order a mix of song and I didn’t know the exact song title, because it was only clear for me what song I meant when I sang: „mmmmm hmmmmm yehhhh hmmmmmmmmm ….“ to the music in my mind; but for the seller,it was just the: „mmmmm hmmmm yehhh hmmmm …“ That didn’t sound like anything at all. So I preferred, to avoid embarrassment, to wait for maybe weeks till I find out the title of the song. Life was really hard before YouTube and Shazam.
Film tapes had a different story. I don’t remember video shops in the 80s in Baghdad, but the video tapes (originals, copies or records from the TV) were lent from one person to another and spread by changing owners. Lent Tapes hardly found their way back to their original owner. Every family had missing video tapes and used family gatherings to ask questions like: „Did you take Gone with the wind?“ or „Who has Grease?“ and when they don’t get an answer: „I will never lend a film to anyone of you again.“ It was a never ending story.
The really big turn in the copy business came with the embargo on Iraq and the invention of the CD. We could get anything on a disk: software, games, films and music. CD shops filled Baghdad and people were just hungry to be up to date with the rest of the world, since we had a strict ban on satellite dishes and almost no Internet. Even the free TV started to broadcast copies. It was a big event when the film Titanic came out in the U.S. and we saw it on free TV just a few weeks after the film prime. We prepared popcorn, drinks and blankets waiting for the film and then went teary-eyed to bed.
After that, the film song of Celine Dion „my heart will go on“ was broadcasted almost every day as a background song when the closing credits of the TV Chanel were displayed.
At that time we didn’t realize that we were all living on a Titanic that was slowly drowning into the sea.
