Is Downloading Against any Philippine Law?

Is Downloading Against any Philippine Law?

In the ancient times, people who work need to run home in order to watch their favorite television series. With the proliferation of technology in the 80s and 90s – the VCR was born which enabled people to record their favorite shows. No need to cram home and beat the traffic. To make things even better, we no longer need to record these shows. All we need to do is to click a button, access YouTube or better yet, go to Torrent and view your favorite shows –past, present, and future episodes. We can even download full series of any show or movie –whether screened here in the Philippines or otherwise – with one touch.

The phenomenon that is downloading, has paved the way for unprecedented conveniences as well as issues as content authors battle out their rights. There seems to be a very thin line between good ol’ file sharing versus piracy which is a threat to the creative class. In this blawg entry, we shall discuss the interplay of different laws relating to downloading of content and its application in the country from a legal juncture.

SOPA and PIPA

SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act is a proposed bill with the end view of avoiding infringement on copyright through restriction on website access or trade of pirated content. Now, PIPA, on the other hand or PIPA or the  PROTECT IP Act is a proposed bill of the same likes as that of SOPA. The goal is to curb "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods." Though the goal is pretty clear, an issue which is much criticized is the point that hinges on possible “content censorship” and the “chilling effect” which it may produce as consequence thereof.

Another issue is that there is already a law which punishes copyright infringement which questions the passage of another bill. However, proponents of the bill insists that SOPA aims to restrict pirating of content by creating a statute which penalizes the access of these cyberlinks being made available to US.

As a result, IT industry is worried of SOPA’s implication and supported that more liberal OPEN – or Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN). A different feature of IOEN is that it affords more efficient enforcement on policing and monitoring of sites that are reported to be infringing and trading copyrighted content.

Philippines’ Take: Cyber Crime Protection Bill of 2012

With the recent enactment of the Cyber Crime Protection Bill of 2012, IT enthusiasts, gamers, legal scholars, and just plain anyone who uses the information highway has mixed reviews. To date, surveys launched internationally have concluded that only “Few countries were able to demonstrate that adequate legal measures had been taken to ensure that perpetrators of cyber crimes would be held accountable for actions” (Cyber Crime…and Punishment.www.witsa.org/papers/McConnell-cybercrime.pdf).  Categories of the most common cyber crimes are data-related crimes such as interception, modification of data or theft; Network-related crimes such as Interference sabotage; access cries such as hacking and distribution of virus and other computer-related crimes such as aiding cyber criminals, fraud and forgery.

Is downloading copyrighted material stealing?

This is the main issue that should be addressed in order to separate the hues of gray in this area. It remains to be seen how IT experts and the legal community can come  up with a balance scorecard or a model that will create a demarcation line between these two. Technology has come to a full swing affording us to retrieve any data in blinding speeds, that sometimes, the way by which we do this has never much occurred to us as anything illegal, until now. Downloading and stealing copyrighted content has never been brought to the fore until now when we see giant multi-media companies battle this issues out in court with gazillions of dollars at stake.

The birth of our country’s Cyber Crime Law is still in its very delicate stage that we still need to watch and observe how other countries will deliver theirs after years of implementation of their laws. This is the best way by which we can adjust as well as curb the rights that is deemed to be an infringement on IP rights of authors.

So, is downloading penalized in any law in the Philippines? The answer is,….we have yet to find out.