There are pickled cucumbers, warm Easter breads and fresh hot copies of Windows 2000. Everywhere you look, young guys in leather jackets hawk Madonna's Music from portable tables.
Pensioners sell CDs stacked on wooden dowels like digital shish kebabs.
On the streets of Kiev, there seem to be more compact discs for sale than vegetables. Ukraine has become the most troublesome source of pirated intellectual property in the world, according to a recent report from the United States Trade Representative, beating out former top pirates China, Paraguay and the Russian Federation. Though China pumps out more discs, the Ukrainian government's intransigence on the issue catapulted the country to the top of the list. Last year, Ukrainian CD manufacturing plants exported an estimated 40 million CDs. At the same time, seizures of these pirate CDs have also been on the rise.