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Intellectual Property and the NTC

March 29, 2006

The law is clear in that the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is not the proper forum to enforce Intellectual Property rights.  IP rightsholders should go to the courts, the police, the NBI, or the Intellectual Property Office.  For its part, the NTC is supposed to regulate the infrastructure not the content that flows within it.   Its job is to ensure that scarce State resources like radio frequencies are efficientlly allocated.  Moreover, the NTC also ensures that public services are made available by balancing the public interest and the economic interests of the service providers.  The is the extent of its mandate.  There is nothing in the law that vests the NTC with IP rights enforcement.

So, it’s irritating to see CASBAA put pressure on the NTC to curb cable piracy (see the INQ7 report).  The NTC responds (correctly) that it has no jurisdiction over IP matters.  Fair enough.  But the more problematic response is this part of the report:

In a text message to INQ7.net, Sarmiento said that the NTC is drafting an agreement with the Intellectual Property Office to address the “issue of jurisdiction.”

In my view, there’s no need for an agreement.  The NTC should just tell CASBAA what every other Intellectual Property law student knows — the enforcement of IP rights does not depend upon either the NTC or the IPO but upon the copyright owners or in this case, the cable operators.  More to the point, the NTC should tell CASBAA to tell its members to initiate piracy suits against the local cable operators.  Put up or shut up.  Nowhere in the law is either the NTC or IPO mandated to protect the rights of cable companies without the latter initiating infringement proceedings and presenting credible evidence.  It’s not enough for CASBAA to make a blanket claim in behalf of its members.  They should require their members to file individual cases with the courts, the police, the NBI or the IPO and prove each instance of cable piracy.  Then, the proper government agency would be duty-bound to render assistance.

The problem with CASBAA is that it would rather shift the cost of enforcing their private rights to NTC and ultimately, the Filipino taxpayer. It’s not enough that the Philippine IP system protects primarily foreign property, must the government subsidize the enforcement of those rights as well.  This is no different from say requiring the government to assign a police car in front of my house just because of a spate of robberies in my neighborhood.  You know they’d never do it but in the case IP rights, the government feels differently.

In that sense, I’m glad the NTC is fighting back with this retort from NTC Deputy Commissioner Jorge Sarmiento:

“If CASBAA has problems with local cable TV operators, they ask for our help. But if the local operators have problems with CASBAA members, CASBAA will say NTC has no jurisdiction over their members who are foreign content providers. We’re now awaiting their position on this,” Sarmiento said.

Good for you, Dep. Comm. Sarmiento.    

Posted by JJ Disini at 8:17 am | permalink

Previous Comments

Pardon me sir for my ignorance what's the CASBAA?

Posted by Bikoyski at April 6, 2006, 1:12 am

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