BAGHDAD — He is everywhere but nowhere, an unseen geek whose skills as a software pirate are so impressive that others are now pirating his work.
Posters and pamphlets promoting his latest DVD, Anas08, hang in shop windows and flap in the breeze on vendors' tables wherever computer equipment is sold in Baghdad.
Looking for a new version of Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office or an online edition of the Koran, complete with English translation and an index to topics and verses? They're all on the Anas08 disc, available for about $3, compared with the thousands of dollars it would cost to buy the 390 programs individually through authorized dealers.
Anas09 will have even more programs, said the creator, whom Iraqis know only as Anas but whose full name is Anas Malik.
In some ways, Malik is just the sort of entrepreneur the Americans hoped would emerge in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein. Malik, 34, took his skills and interests and turned them into a thriving business run by an Iraqi, for Iraqis.
"I'm doing it for the money, but also I wanted something with an Iraqi name that would be famous and help people, and be made by an Iraqi," said Malik, who sees himself as a proud patriot and an ambassador of sorts for his country. The posters and manuals he produces to advertise Anas08 feature "Iraq-Baghdad" in large lettering, so nobody can claim the product is non-Iraqi.
But Malik also is a symbol of how hopes have been derailed since Hussein's overthrow five years ago. Malik left Iraq in early 2007 because of the violence plaguing the country and lives with his wife and two children in Syria. He makes good money, but he doesn't spend it in Iraq and has no intention of returning as long as it remains dangerous. His business, built on dodging copyright restrictions designed to protect producers of software programs, is an example of Iraqis working around the system to survive.
This is especially evident in the telecommunications industry, which exploded in 2003 as Iraqis got their first taste of unfettered Internet access and cellphones. The government-run State Company for Internet Services says 250,000 Iraqis subscribe to Internet service, but an American advisor to the Ministry of Communications says the actual number is probably about 12 million.
