Piracy in the Philippines: What a Shame

With the entry of the Philippines to globalization, the problem in piracy emerged. This kind of piracy has become a threat to the copyrighted industry locally and internationally. It caused a lot of losses and disadvantages.

The problem of piracy is not limited to the Philippines; it is everywhere. The difference is that, in our country, piracy is somewhat tolerated while in other countries, piracy is a very serious issue. As a proof, about 400,000 to 600,000 copies of films are produced illegally in the Philippines alone.

In our society, the practice of piracy has already been an accepted norm. People who are involved with it are simply acting according to the norms. In the Philippines, being a culture-dominated country, it is seen that Filipinos do whatever that they do based on the actions accepted by the society, whether it be legal or not. Thus, supporting piracy, although illegal, is considered a norm nowadays.

The problem of optical media piracy has caused a lot of harm to the different industries involved—the movie industry, music industry, and the computer and video game software industry. The same kind of harm has been caused by the piracy industry to the Philippines, specifically to the Philippine movie and music industry.

Such harms have made the Philippines famous all over the world for being one of the piracy capitals. This recognition, however, does not do anything good to our country; instead, it is currently giving all Filipinos a hard time to clean up its name after so many disgraces it acquired.

Piracy here in our country has always been an illegal act. It is considered a form of stealing in a way that when you use, which includes producing and selling, or buy pirated materials, you are already using one’s product without the owner or producer’s consent.

Although piracy is considered an illegal act, its rampancy is obvious nowadays. Filipinos are known to be movie and music lovers, and with the emergence of newer forms of technology, Filipinos are already into the use of computers for playing games and doing other things related to the use of these newer forms of technology, like mixing and editing sounds and making movies, which require installation of computer softwares.

These pirated materials became widespread during the late 1990’s. The existence of these gave the masses a chance to own CDs and DVDs that contain their favorite songs and movies and computer softwares that they needed without spending too much money.

By 2001, the Philippines was among the top three producers and sellers of pirated materials among the countries here in Asia and ranked number seven as worst Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) violator.

The Philippines was recommended by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), “a private sector coalition formed in 1984 to represent the U.S. copyright-based industries in bilateral and multilateral efforts to improve international protection of copyrighted materials,” to be on the Priority Watch List in 2002. On February 2006, the Philippines’ standing went down to just “Watch List.”

The inclusion of the Philippines in the Priority Watch List was due to the rampant production and existence of pirated materials throughout the country. An estimated loss of US$ 120.1 million on United States copyright industries was due to piracy in the Philippines during 2001.

The continuing existence of these pirated materials will surely cause the Philippine and international movie and music industry and the computer software industry to fall. The Philippine film industry used to produce around 240 films each year but in 2004, the number crashed down to 40 films per year. If piracy in our country will still go on, it would not be surprising anymore if the number will fall to only maybe 20 films per year. The Philippine movie industry loses around three billion pesos in income every year. Producers and owners of original materials will lose profits and eventually, they might just be part of the growing piracy industry.

We have many talented and great singers here in the Philippines yet they still cannot go higher than just a national singer or artist. Most of our singers want to make a name in the international scene but piracy is a huge hindrance for the achievement of these dreams. Piracy is sure to be one of the factors that limit the ability of our musicians and composers to gain international acceptance.

More materials will be pirated and with the continuing rise of poverty here in our country, more Filipinos will engage in the piracy industry—more Filipinos will produce and buy such products.