WILL SUCH LEGISLATION AND TREATY ADHERENCE, IF PURSUED, BE VIOLATIVE OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ON FREE EXPRESSION AND PRIVACY?

WILL SUCH LEGISLATION AND TREATY ADHERENCE, IF PURSUED, BE VIOLATIVE OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ON FREE EXPRESSION AND PRIVACY?

No, such legislation and treaty adherence will not be violative of constitutional rights on free expression and privacy. The passing of such bill into law is presumed to be in accordance with our constitution. Under the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines, Article III of Bill of Rights, Section 2 “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effect against unreasonable searches and seizure of whatever nature and for any purpose shall be inviolable, and no search warrant or warrant of arrest shall issue except upon probable cause to be determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation of the complaint and the witnesses he may produce, and the witnesses he may produce, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” In this article, a person is protected from such unreasonable searches and seizures from any person even from the government if there is no right violated or illegal act done. This provision is applicable in cases where a person, by committing such acts or omissions, violated the rights of the others and such action by the government is done in due process. Hence, the creation of anti-piracy bill will not violate one’s right to privacy for a person is freely given the security from encroachment as long as his acts are done legally. If not, then he can be subjected to such consequences of his illegal acts.

Section 4 of the same article “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for redress of grievance.” This is not an absolute right for one’s act can be an exercise of his right but can be a violation to another. Hence, even if a person is validly exercising his lawful right to freedom of expression like that of copying and making on-line piracy but violates the rights of the owner, he is in violation of such articles.

Hence, the creation of such bill would not result to violation of expression and piracy for such bill only fortifies one’s right to that violators who circumvent laws just to pave their way through its malicious motive of gaining only for themselves.

WHETHER SUCH ACT OF DOWNLOADING IS INFRINGEMENT OR NOT, SHOULD LAWS SIMILAR TO THE US PROPSED LEGISLATION “SOPA/PIPA,” UK’s ‘DIGITAL ECONOMY ACT OF 2010,” FRANCE’s “HAPODI LAW,’ and NEW ZEALAND’s “THREE-STRIKE” RULE BE PASSED IN THE PHILIPPINES AND SHOULD THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT ENTER AND RATIFY THE “ACTA” TREATY, TO REMEDY ONLINE PIRACY.

WHETHER SUCH ACT OF DOWNLOADING IS INFRINGEMENT OR NOT, SHOULD LAWS SIMILAR TO THE US PROPSED LEGISLATION “SOPA/PIPA,” UK’s ‘DIGITAL ECONOMY ACT OF 2010,” FRANCE’s “HAPODI LAW,’ and NEW ZEALAND’s “THREE-STRIKE” RULE BE PASSED IN THE PHILIPPINES AND SHOULD THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT ENTER AND RATIFY THE “ACTA” TREATY, TO REMEDY ONLINE PIRACY.

"Piracy” in the Philippines is used interchangeably with “copyright infringement” which is the unlawful copying of software, videogames, movies or MP3s. Due to serious, rampant and contagious problem emanating from online piracy in the Philippines, the Philippine government is inclined to form a bill similar to that of SOPA or PIPA which aims to help protect copyright owners from having their content pirated by others, either as a hobby or for profit.  The materials or files involved are usually movies, music, software, photos and other IP-protected content. Normally, it is the record labels and the movie producers are the ones heavily affected by the online piracy.

Aside from the Business Software Alliance which deals with the surveillance among areas prone to software piracy and the Optical Media Board or OMB which raids shops and stalls selling fake cds and dvds, this Anti-Online proposal bill will urge people to combat along with the coordination of concerned sites and internet service providers against the escalating online piracy. The proposal is still a proposal and most likely be patterned to the abovementioned SOPA and PIPA of the US Congress with more adjustments acclimated to local settings.

                With the approval of such bill, it may or may not include any or all of the following provisions and penalties concerning shutting down local websites illegally distributing pirated software and applications; closing down of local sites that provide downloads of unlicensed songs or movies; blocking off international sites that are known to openly assist in illegally distributing copyrighted materials; imposing penalties on local websites that uses copyrighted materials without proper consent or attribution; and imposing penalties on individuals or groups that openly share or distribute copyrighted content.

The positive effect of it could help online publishers and bloggers in many ways. Blogger can simply have another website or blog shut down for illegally copying their articles, photos and videos. Furthermore, a blogger can now claim damages against news portals illegally lifting their copyrighted videos and photos. Also, bloggers can report sites that scrape their RSS feeds and have local ISPs block these sites. Likewise, web designers can run after 3rd parties that copy their designs, logos and artworks and implements it on their own website or sell them to others.

Bloggers frequently asked questions redound to how they can protect their content from being used by others without their consent. According to some articles, it can be remedied by enabling a number of technical safeguards like “prevent hotlinking, watermarking, reporting to Google AdSense, filing DMCA complaints”.

Having this proposal enacted into a bill will provide a lot of benefits to bloggers, website owners, independent artists and web designers. On the other hand, this could be the end to a lot of local sites likes sites that offer video streaming TV shows and dramas like telenovelas and news, blogs that offer downloads to cracks and hacks the software, forums that provide ways for users to share copyrighted files or materials such as songs, mobile applications  and the like.

It is but right and in tune with the present scenario to create a bill which would somehow lessen or totally eradicate online piracy without prejudice to local sites. This is based on the premise that those who are involved with such illegal acts know for a fact and from the start that what they are doing are, by nature, illegal hence cannot be permitted nor consented to favor a class or sector of society when such acts resulted to a violation of one’s legal right protected under the law.  

“WHETHER THE ACT OF DOWNLOADING COPYRIGHTED WORKS, SHARED BY OTHERS WHO ARE NOT COPYRIGHT OWNERS OF SUCH WORKS, IS AN ACT OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT ON THE PART OF THE DOWNLOADER”

“WHETHER THE ACT OF DOWNLOADING COPYRIGHTED WORKS, SHARED BY OTHERS WHO ARE NOT COPYRIGHT OWNERS OF SUCH WORKS, IS AN ACT OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT ON THE PART OF THE DOWNLOADER”

The purpose of Copyright Law is to create software, music, literature and other works, using digital technologies, by ensuring that the creator will be able to reap the financial benefits of the work. The Law on Copyright gives the owner or author exclusive rights to reproduce, adapt, publicly distribute, perform and display their works. However, an exception under the law would arise if such copyrighted materials were acquired through the concept of “fair use”. Fair use, in some instances, permits the use or copying of all or a portion of a copyrighted work without the permission of the owner. Nowadays, the use of digital technologies by some persons, intentionally or fair use, whether for profit or not, to perfectly copy the works of others and made available to others for distribution and consumption are presumed to be in violation of copyright infringement unless otherwise substantiated by reasonable and conclusive evidences. This makes it easier for people to create and get copies of songs or videogames, and more difficult for copyright holders, like record companies, to control the works once they are released to the public. This new technologies has changed the way content distributors relate with their customers and law and business models are just trying to catch up.

A person who is a downloader, generally, is infringing copyright if he or she downloaded or stored copyrighted materials on his or her computer shared by others who are not copyright owners of such work if such is without the permission of the copyright owner, unless fair use or other exemption under copyright law applies. In other words, the intent of the user or downloader is necessary to constitute copyright infringement. A person who downloads files for personal use is not in violation of the law. Most of the downloading over the Internet that are commercially available copyrighted works, like music or movies, through file sharing systems is illegal. An example would be the case of Napster where its users were adjudged to be infringing copyright when they shared MP3 files of copyrighted music. Even if you don’t illegally offer recordings to others, you join a file-sharing network and download unauthorized copies of all the copyrighted music you want for free from the computers of other network members would also result to copyright infringement. Also, in order to gain access to copyrighted music on the computers of other network members, you pay a fee to join a file-sharing network that isn’t authorized to distribute or make copies of copyrighted music. Then you download unauthorized copies of all the music you want. The law on copyright gives the holder a limited right on reproduction, distribution, and display of such work. Such copyright infringement would not set in if such is only for personal use. If a person bought a fake dvd copy for the purpose of watching a movie or for personal use, he may not be liable for copyright infringement. However, if such person reproduced the copy of the movie for profit or gain, then he becomes liable for copyright infringement.  

In contrast, if a person has purchased licensed software, like Microsoft Office, it is legal to keep a copy on his or her computer. Also, if a person downloads music or other copyrighted material in accordance with the terms of a license, or if the copyright owner grants him or her permission to download or keep a copy of the owner's work, such persons are free to do so. According to some articles, it is okay to download music from sites authorized by the owners of the copyrighted music, whether or not such sites charge a fee. There are sites where permission is granted and content is available for downloading legally. It is never okay to download unauthorized music from pirate sites (web or FTP) or peer-to-peer systems. An examples of peer-to-peer systems making unauthorized music available for download would be Ares, BitTorrent, Gnutella, Limewire, and Morpheus. It is worth knowing that it is never okay to make unauthorized copies of music available to others via uploading music on peer-to-peer systems.