I never thought the day would come when I would find a Pirates of the Caribbean film boring. But then again, I never thought they would be making a fourth edition.

The only good thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is Johnny Depp. For once, Penelope Cruz doesn’t quite cut it. She’s beautiful enough to be worthy of the “feelings” Jack Sparrow confesses to having had for her once upon a time, but lacks real magic. Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa returns as a worthy collaborator, but Orlando Bloom is sorely missed and — I never thought this day would come either — I wouldn’t have minded Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth either.

The Pirates have definitely gone too far.

And so, I find, has the pirate in me.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I used to object to piracy in any form. Though I have never had cause to weigh in on the seafaring sort, downloading of illicit music and movies, de rigueur for many of my generation ever since the dawn of Napster, was not something which I would do.

And then, one day, I found myself reading a book in the bathroom mirror. One of its bootlegged pages had been printed in reverse, and revealing my well-honed skills as a pirate, I quickly realised that rather than throwing the book away, there was a simple method of unlocking its trapped treasures.

How had I fallen this far?

It was time to introspect, and it dawned on me that — and this is the kind answer — I had allowed myself to be driven to such desperation by the lack of availability. Music had been my gateway drug, as it is for so many others. Like my peers, I had gradually grown immune to the constraints of copyright as I watched my iPod swell with all manner of contraband music that had previously been inaccessible to me. There had been another impetus to seek out the digital route: the bulging shelves of my home could hold no more clutter. And if the iTunes store couldn’t be accessed where I was, could I really be blamed?

Then, I moved to China. For the first six months of my stay, I was without a TV. And this changed my view of viewing forever. Freed from the dictates of cable networks, I preferred to watch select shows, from beginning of series to end. It began with downloads (ah, those beautiful torrents!) — Castle, Bones, House. And then I discovered the many Chinese YouTube-like websites that offered full episodes, which might have been dismally grainy but got the job done quite well. Of course, I wasn’t the only one using these, so eventually someone from the networks took notice and starting pulling down mostly everything you’d want to watch. So it was back to downloads. And when I was too lazy to hunt for what I wanted, I’d just make a trip to my local CD store.

You’d be hard pressed to find a source in Shanghai for ‘legal’ CDs. But everywhere you look, there are shops selling the latest and the best of world cinema and TV. And no shaky ‘hall’ prints here — sometimes the resolution is poor and you may have the odd playback problem, but more or less, this is good quality pilfering. For about 15 yuan a disk (Rs 100), you can watch the latest releases well before the official DVDs are out.

But, oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! After movies, books followed. This was not a slippery slope I had wanted to be on, but there I found myself, holding on for dear life.

I started out trying to buy books from proper stores, but often couldn’t. There aren’t many shops in Shanghai that stock English books, and most of the ones that do are prohibitively expensive and have limited selection. Next, I turned to the legitimate parts of the Internet. Free online libraries such as Gutenberg.org slaked my thirst for some time, but I found that there are only so many classics you can read before you begin to crave The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. So I decided to check out the online ebook retailers — and found to my horror that digital versions of books cost considerable amounts of money; more for instance, than most paperbacks in India and elsewhere. And then, many sites weren’t even selling in China in the first place.

Spurned, I turned to torrents again and, at the click of a button, whole libraries made their way onto my computer. And yet I found myself unable to read them. Apart from the occasional pang of conscience when the book had true literary merit (I seem to feel less remorse when reading stolen bestsellers, perhaps because I believe the authors are rich enough), they are largely in PDF format and annoying to read on a mobile device such as phone or iPod. On the computer it is slightly better, but it feels far less like relaxation and more like work.

Then I chanced upon my neighbourhood book cart. Though not as ubiquitous or as well-stocked as the DVD stores, there are carts filled with pirated books everywhere in the city. In some areas there are also stores where you can pick up baskets of books — and then purchase them by weight. From a cart, you’d pay between 10 and 15 yuan for a book (Rs 70 to 100), while by weight (per 500g) it is even less. Obviously, since the content comes free, the only cost is the paper. Unless you count the cost — sigh! — to your soul.

Whether cart or store, you will find a strange assortment of titles: Stieg Larsson, Agatha Christie, Revolutionary Road, Malcolm Gladwell, The Rape of Nanking. The one I had been attempting to read in the bathroom mirror was The Last Lecture. It is a book written by a dying man about all he has learned in this life. It proved to be too much: my intense remorse prevented me from finishing the bootlegged copy, and now I intend to buy a real one, in my attempt at penance.

It was small consolation when I read about a children’s book (really meant for frustrated parents) called Go the F**k to Sleep, which, thanks to piracy, has gone viral all over the Internet — and the book hasn’t even been launched yet. So many advance copies have been booked that it is already on the Amazon bestseller list, a phenomenon which has prompted commentators to ask whether a little piracy might actually be a good thing, like free marketing for a book.

Still, it wasn’t enough to wash the blood off my hands and The Last Lecture now sits unfinished on my bookshelf next to my copy of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, a book I asked a friend coming over from New York to bring for me (and later found on a number of book carts).

Ariely is a well-known behavioural economist, and I recently stumbled upon a talk he delivered on the subject of cheating. In it, he describes a study he conducted in which volunteers were given designer sunglasses. People in one group got the real deal, while members of the other group were told that they had been given knockoffs.

Subsequently, both groups were given a test and paid for each correct answer they wrote. Then, they were told that they would be given more money to give an answer they knew was wrong, which Ariely likened to a doctor delivering a wrong diagnosis because it would make him richer. He found that the group with the fake sunglasses was more inclined to cheat in order to get the extra cash.

Is that the road I am headed down? Today I am a pirate of books, music, movies. Tomorrow will I feel more inclined to cheat, steal, lie? Have I crossed a line somewhere? And if so, can someone please tell me where Jack Sparrow buys his eyeliner?