Piracy of Optical Media Piracy Report

Last night, I happily played the role of a “hakot” for a good friend. I attended the delegates’ dinner for the First Regional Conference on Optical Disk Piracy. I was handed a CD copy of the Optical Media Board’s Report to the President on the state of (what else?) optical disk piracy in the Philippines. I haven’t opened the plastic wrapper just yet but I did notice that it contained a copyright notice that went like this: “(c) Optical Media Board. All rights reserved.”

Hmmm . . .

Maybe they forgot about Sec. 176.1 of the Intellectual Property Code which says: “No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the Philippines.”

At any rate, I’ll risk the ire of the Board and will post a copy of the report here later (I left it at home) without asking for their consent. If I’ve violated the notice by doing that, then I would have committed piracy of a report on piracy. I just love the irony.

And if you liked that one, the other irony of the night was that I actually testified in the Senate to oppose the passage of the Optical Media Law.  I even submitted a paper that detailed our objections. Needless to say, our proposed changes did not find their way to the enacted statute. 

But I wanted to see my friend and meet up with classmates.  Best of all, it was a great buffet dinner!  Thank you, OMB.