Who da pirate?

I'm posting this article coz it really really translates my thoughts into words. Mr. Diokno did me a favor! I just want to put the link up, but with inquirer, this will be gone after a week. Mr. Diokno, with your kind permission, I request permission to show your article to my friends. Thanks!

Who da pirate?
First posted 02:23am (Mla time) June 11, 2005
By Pepe Diokno Inquirer News Service

RIGHT before Star Trek Enterprise on HBO, I saw this ad that said, "If you think it's wrong to steal cars, and bags, and money, it's just as wrong to buy pirated. Piracy is theft" or something like that. The ad is part of the HIP (Honor Intellectual Property) campaign of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.

And cool, piracy is theft. And it's deteriorating society! (Echo, echo) The ad places a lack of respect for an artist's intellectual property at the center of the piracy problem. And I agree. But the problem is, who has the right to talk about honoring intellectual property in the first place?

Buzz! What are record companies and movie studios? Wrong. Companies who make money off other people's creations and put profit as their top priority do not honor intellectual property. Record companies aren't on this earth for the music-they're here for money. Same goes with movie studios. When these corporations ask you to stop buying pirated, they're really just asking you to give them more money. Don't mind them.

Buzz! What is the government? Wrong again. We pay 1/3 of our annual income to our government - and they tax us for everything we buy- and at least more than half of the revenue they get goes into the pockets of Secretaries blahblah and blahblah (and the people who make up their Edsa motorcade).

The government is full of people with individual interests. These people make their money off of your work and my work. They feed off us.They have no right to lecture us about honoring intellectual property.If they did, they'd respect us enough to show us where 1/3 of our income goes. When the government asks you to stop buying pirated, they're really just asking you to fund their next scandal.

We're all pirates!

So it turns out that the main proponents of anti-piracy campaigns aren't in the position to talk to us about intellectual property rights in the first place. They're pirates themselves. The real message of the "No to Piracy" mumbo jumbo is, "Give this fat businessman money" and, "Give this fat politician some dough." It's kinda like the US Government saying they want to kill terrorism when they themselves strike terror in the hearts of little Arab children, among others.

Moolah is behind all this anti-piracy crap. If there wasn't any money in music and movies, we wouldn't have an Optical Media Board and Intellectual Property Office.

Look - in the end, when piracy is, um, eradicated, the ones who will benefit are, first the record companies and movie studios, then the government. The artists get the crumbs. (Like, remember when TLC said they were bankrupt? Anyway...)

Victims!

The victims of piracy are the artists themselves. They're victims of you and me buying CDs worth P50 each and downloading stuff off the net, yes. But they're also victims of executives and politicos leeching on their talent. Everyone's trying to get a piece of these artists, but they're the poorest ones around. People don't realize that the artist is the basic form of life. (Like plants!)

It's typical of Filipino society to look down on the building blocks of society. The labor sector, for example, is regarded with as much respect in this country as, say, rags. They get paid the lowest, but work the hardest-they work their asses off for rice and salt. And then we laugh at the thought that if all of them died of starvation, none of us will survive (it's possible.).

This system of society is a sickness-and it's one of the reasons why our country will never improve. The day we start giving truck drivers and janitors their due is the day we will develop (Any sign of that happening, mister? Uh, sorry.) This is a sickness and a problem.

Piracy on the other hand is a sickness but it isn't the problem. It's (drum roll...) the way we think. A lack of respect for (or knowledge on) intellectual property is a major part of the piracy issue. A lack of regard for the people who actually do the work is another problem. Our national leaders' being out of touch with the way 90 percent of our country lives is another major problem. Unless we change the way we think, the Philippines-and all Filipinos, for that matter-is destined to utter ruin.

The way we Filipinos think contributes to the one big word we pray to God (or Allah, or the kami, or Buddha-it doesn't matter) to get rid of-poverty.

Poverty

Piracy will never be expelled from this region unless something is done about poverty. And to try to solve piracy and pay attention to IP rights are futile when most Filipinos can't eat.

Picture this: OMB chairman Edu Manzano arrives in an expensive car at a slum area in Caloocan or some other place. He makes his way to a flimsy stage and delivers a speech. "I know you people only make P50 a day,which isn't even enough to feed yourself let alone your family, but please, if you want to enjoy the music of Sarah Geronimo, do not eat for just five days, and buy a P250 original CD!"

Now they won't be able to enjoy Sarah Geronimo. (Aww...) So the argument is that if you can't buy something, you can probably live without it. If you can't buy CDs, too bad. But any musician will say that music is life. And any filmmaker will tell you that film is the foremost medium of expression that everybody needs.The people who make the products that are pirated most often will say that their creations are essential to life. It is the soulless politico who doesn't get that, and will say that music is an unnecessary expense.

The point is you cannot tell people who are underpaid (hey, even minimum wage is below what is needed to keep a family alive) to spend a whole week's salary on music. But at the same time, you cannot deprive a person of music.

Demand, supply, solution

But you're right. There's no concrete, clear-cut course of action against piracy. But the least we can do is know what we're attacking. It's not the supply of pirated products, but the demand of them that we should eradicate. See, if people want something, they're going to find ways to get it. These raids our officials do are like games of whack-a-mole. (If you see something come up, whack it! Oops, there's another one! Whack it!)

The solution is to address the demand for pirated products. Record companies and movie studios have to show us that they put music and movies before profit. (Now that is ideal, but telling people to respect artists' rights while being after the money themselves is hypocritical.) And the government should put more effort into realizing long-term goals like speeding up the justice system, fixing the LaborCode, and decentralizing powers, and become less involved in short-term problems like the operation at the back of Metrowalk.

And third, the artists have to be aware of blood-sucking from all directions. Though it is hard to survive without canoodling with and giving into the companies that distribute your work, people must realize that these corporations need you. The people who create must band together and stand up for (cliche coming:) their rights. (Just like People Power... or something.)

These "Say No To Piracy" drives are nothing but crap-they're there but no one minds them. They're there but they don't solve the main issues that cause piracy. The money used for a 30-second spot about intellectual property can be used to put people to school and educate them even better about rights, and proper consumerism. (Hey, an -ism!)

Piracy is theft. And all of us are guilty of it-we're all guilty of living off somebody else's work. But then, piracy isn't the problem. The problem is that our society is sick, and that our country is poor.

Raid that, freaks.

Comments at pepediokno@gmail.com