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Bing on Some Bloggers

May 20, 2005

Bing offers her honest insights on some famous bloggers. It’s an interesting read. She’s referring to certain individuals but it can also be seen as practical advice on how to handle yourself as a blogger.  Certainly, we could all use some constructive criticism.  

Posted by JJ Disini at 9:37 am | permalink | comments[2]

Work Plan for Congressional Committee on ECommerce

Janette Toral writes about the work program for the Congressional Oversight Committee for the E-Commerce Law.  I’m pesonally interested in the E-Government Audit which will review past IT projects and e-government activities. Some years ago, ITECC approved some e-government projects out of a multi-billion peso fund.  It would be good to know the status of those projects since no updates have been publicly released.  It’s important that these kinds of projects be coordinated properly to avoid duplication of tasks among agencies and the wasting of taxpayers’ money.  If there are success stories, great! We could always use good news.  If there are failures, then we should do our best to learn from them and press on.  Good luck to the Committee.

UPDATE:  Here’s a copy of the slide presentation made before the Committee (in PPT and PDF).  Thanks to Janette Toral for the copies!

Posted by JJ Disini at 9:18 am | permalink | comments[1]

What’s Missing in the BSA Software Piracy Study?

The Business Software Alliance has released its  annual global software piracy study.  Here’s the relevant part for the Philippines:

Software piracy rate in the Philippines went down to 71% in 2004, a decrease of 1% from the 2003 level. However, losses due to software piracy increased to US$69 million (PhP3.7 billion) from US$55 million last year. In the Asia Pacific, 53% of the software installed on personal computers was pirated in 2004, the same level as in 2003, with losses increasing from US$7.5 billion to almost US$8 billion.

I’m not going to argue the methodology. Suffice it to say that the losses can’t be that big simply because they assume everyone in the country can afford their software.   This is an obvious error.  People resort to piracy because they’d rather buy other things (say, food) than programs.  It is wrong to think that stronger IP enforcement will  force people to buy software.  They’d probably junk their computers or seek other alternatives.

The fact is that if BSA acheived the strict IP law enforcement they want for this country, their members’ profits or market share will not rise.  Faced with prosecution or imprisonment, local users will simply shift to free/open source software (FOSS) applications such as OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

Additionally, the study does not take into consideration the full impact of free open source software (FOSS) in the local market.  This should be no suprise since BSA is made up of proprietary software vendors and as an organization it is intended to expand the market for their members’ goods rather than diminish them.  So, FOSS plays no part in their strategy to combat software piracy:

Efforts continue by BSA and others to stem the growth of piracy, including implementation of educational programs, policy initiatives to strengthen copyright laws and enforcement of those laws. These are effective inhibitors to piracy.

This statement is a misleading in two (2) respects.

First, the Philippines no longer needs to strengthen our copyright laws.  Our IP legal environment is very strong with not only local statutes dating back at least 50 years (and an even older one during the Spanish era), but the Philippines has acceded to all major copyright treaties (say the same for all IP treaties like TRIPS, The Patent Cooperation Treaty, the WIPO Treaty, the WIPO Internet Treaties, etc.). 

We even have regulations here that don’t exist in the U.S. like the Optical Media Law and the Supreme Court Rules on Search and Seizure in IP Infringement Cases.   The Supreme Court has even established special IP trial courts all over the country despite the fact that it has resisted forming special Bouncing Checks Courts in the face of so many cases clogging the lower courts. (In other words, the many victims of bouncing checks were not treated the same as IP rights  holders despite the fact that much of the IP registered in this country belongs to foreigners.)
So, there’s not much more the Philippines can do in strengthening its IP laws.  (more…)

Posted by JJ Disini at 8:04 am | permalink | comments[3]