Ghostbusters

Piracy has and always will be a way of life in developing countries. After the 2^nd world war, devastated Japan mass produced consumer products ‘inspired’ by patented and copyrighted materials until it became the giant that it is today. I still remember the time when “made in Taiwan” meant disposable, and “made in China” meant worse. Of course, there was “made in Korea” which meant “genuine/authentic imitations/replicas”.

Today, consumer goods are either made in Japan, Korea, or China. Such irony.

Because of this trend, the developed world saw it fit to aggressively protect Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), thus the enactment of strict IP Laws in the 80’s all throughout the globe.

The Philippines became a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO] in 1980. It was a signatory to a number of significant multilateral international agreements and treaties for the protection and promotion of intellectual property rights, including the TRIPs of the WTO.

Since 1947, a number of laws were enacted in the country for this purpose, including the enactment of PD 1987, or an act creating the Videogram Regulatory Board, in 1985, Republic Act No. 8293 otherwise known as theIntellectual Property Code of the Philippines which took effect on January 1, 1998, and the most recent RA 9239, or the Optical Media Act of 2003.

Having worked in the VRB for almost 2 years, I was witness to the cat and mouse chase involving the government and video pirates. I remember when I, and the deputized volunteer movie stuntmen would chase after vendors along EDSA in Cubao or along Arlegui in Quiapo. I also remember how these stuntmen would scale 20 foot walls with their bare hands in implementing search warrants when building occupants wouldn’t allow us entry. As if it was yesterday, I still remember the gun-battle we figured in in Quiapo when we surprised the truckloads and truckloads of pirated disc deliveries at early dawn.

While we could claim partial victory, having convicted almost 50 illegal video replicators and having forfeited in favor of the government 5 replicating machines worth over 1 billion pesos in that short span of time, the war is far from over. Especially today when the war-front has changed, it has become more difficult to address the problem of IPR violations.

Before the rise of peer to peer file sharing and online downloading, the ‘enemy’ and the objectives were tangible – stop the production of pirated discs and eliminate their availability in the market. You could measure your success by counting the replicating plants you close; the machines you successfully seize and forfeit; the number of discs you take away from the market; and the persons you successfully put behind bars or otherwise deport.

This no longer applies. We are faced with battling an unseen ‘enemy’ hidden in anonymity – a ghost or ghosts that live and survive through the internet.

While modern technology can trace IP addresses and eventually catch up with perpetrators, the sheer volume of peers, leechers, and other type of users, makes the endeavor almost impossible and outrightly impractical. Even the US is content with making examples of hapless and random users to drive a point, but this is far from actually resolving the problem.

Then, there is the issue of whether downloading or copying is really a crime. Undoubtedly, the prevailing social contract condemns stealing (i.e. taking a tangible thing belonging to another without permission), but is IP an actual thing? To borrow a wise man’s words, the general consensus is “We are not stealing. We are just borrowing. We are just copying. We are not taking anything.”

So, how do we make people believe that downloading is stealing? How do we convince the public there is indeed an intangible evil that we are up against? How do we make people see? Who do we run to who can actually chase after these perpetrators? So, who we gonna call?

The Ghostbusters!