Ducky Paredes

“At P80 per disc, the projected piracy revenue from one day of operations would have been P3.2 million.”

by Ducky Paredes

The proof that the Optical Media Board (OMB) has been able to finally make some headway in its campaign against copyright infringement and unauthorized reproduction and distribution of counterfeit materials in electronic and audio-visual media is that the movies shown in December’s Metro Manila Film Festival have not yet been reproduced by the usual pirates.
In the last decade, it seemed as though the Philippines was almost helpless against copyright infringement in optical media. Among the reasons have been advances in reproduction technology, coupled with the bargain mentality of the local consumer. Why spend so much when you can get the same thing at a lower price? In reality, of course, sometimes the lower-priced product does not really work?
Software piracy is theft and fraudulence; copyright violators steal from the artist and the producers who have the right to profit from their work and investment. Software and optical media piracy is as awful as piracy on the high seas and elsewhere. When it happens in our country, the world regards us as just as unlawful and undisciplined as those heavily armed pirates in Somalia who make Somalia the armpit of the world.
The Optical Media Board (OMB) headed by Chairman Eduardo B. Manzano, was created to stop the illegal trafficking of counterfeit audio-visual materials in the Philippines. The job was originally assigned to the Videogram Regulatory Board (VRB). In 2004, the VRB was dissolved and its function was absorbed by the OMB.
The Philippines started its fascination for optical discs around the year 1996, when portable compact disc (CD) players became popular and demand for CDs increased. By the next year, the VRB licensed its first CD replicating plant.
Around the same year, the video compact disc (VCD) became a popular format with the proliferation of VCD players and CD-ROM drives. By 1998, the VCD market was flourishing and had overtaken sales of VHS tapes.
But with the proliferation of VCD players, VCD piracy went from plenty to rampant. The technology was easy and the quality tolerable.
By the year 2000, pirate copies of VCDs started to seriously compete with legitimate products for market share.
This caused the decline in revenues of the Philippine film and music industries; government was also deprived of taxes that it would have earned from legitimate VCDs. CDs and DVDs.
Manzano credited the success of 2008 to his team at the OMB, who did their best despite their palpable financial and manpower limitations. Manzano also credits the consumer: “I must also cite the growing support that the public has for our mission, plus the cooperation we continue to receive from the Philippine National Police (PNP), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Bureau of Customs and legitimate Muslim optical media traders particularly in Quiapo, Manila .”
In recognition of the OMB’s uncompromising struggle against piracy in the Philippines, Edu Manzano has been presented with numerous awards and commendations from the Movie Producers Association of America (MPAA) and the Hong Kong-based International Phonography Association (IPA). He was also the first to receive the Asia Pacific Copyright Enforcer Award (ACE) in Beijing . His efforts earned for the Philippines well deserved plaudits from the US Trade Representative which has been monitoring the country’s performance in this regard.
Intelligence information conveyed to OMB has it that criminal syndicates from China , Indonesia , Thailand, and Malaysia are the brains behind the piracy operations here in the Philippines. It is hoped that the intense pressure and the relentless raids conducted by untiring OMB chairman and his operatives will serve as an effective deterrent to the continued operation of these syndicates and discourage them from making any further inroads into the Philippine market.
The OMB’s most recent operation resulted in the closure of a factory in Novaliches, Quezon City that was mass-producing pirated media. The factory had expensive state-of-the-art technology and top-of-the-line reproduction equipment, allowing for a turn-out of at least 40,000 discs per day.
At P80 per disc, the projected piracy revenue from one day of operations would have been P3.2 million. Continuous operation over a year would have given the factory a over a billion pesos.
Last year, there were a total of 1,820 inspections and raids in the Metro Manila area. These raids occurred in shopping malls, illegal stalls, outlets, and factories. The OMB reported seizing over 5 million fake DVDs, CDs, Mp3 discs, in addition to replicating machines, printing equipment, TV monitors, amplifiers, speakers, woofers, PlayStations, DVD players, CD players, and computers.
The total estimated value of the fake discs, equipment, and other pirating paraphernalia confiscated by the OMB for 2008 was around P1.78 billion. That represented a significant increase from the P443 million worth of pirated discs and other materials seized in 2007.
There is talk of a senatorial possibility for Edu Manzano, who was a Makati councilor and who last ran for vice mayor against Mayor Binay’s candidate. Will he go back to politics, when a new President is elected.
Whether he decides to go for the Senate or not, Edu would probably be a better one than a sitting senator part of whose claim to fame was that he also once headed the VRB, the forerunner of the OMB.

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hvp 01.28.09)