IP Piracy in the Philippines – Irony

>I see that here, Bong Revilla Jr has been honored by an american (I mean, of course, USian) motion picture group for his efforts against piracy. I take it they are lauding him for his crusade, such as it is, against video piracy.

Now, I live in the Philippines, and it is ludicrous that any USian organization would laud any filipino for making a dent (just a dent, there is NO WAY he is making any real difference) in the pirating of movies. I live in Cagayan de Oro city. Pirated movies are everywhere. Pretty much the only movies I can’t find in Cagayan (although I’m sure they’re there, I’ve been approached often enough by hawkers who had the goods right in their hands) are pr0n. I’ve been to Davao, and there, **everything** is available. Finding Nemo, any movie not yet showing, lots of movies that have already show, Pr0n, etc, it’s all there. Now, certainly the last time I was in Manila was long before this award. But when I was there, any visitor to Virra Mall would be fucking overwhelmed by everything that was available. Software was available (anything, any version, any fucking language, even though there weren’t many russian speakers in Manila, you could get russian language anything), movie VCDs were available, DVDs were available (mostly they weren’t really the official DVDs,


although there were some of those too, mostly they were the VCD movies, but packaged on one DVD-medium rather than two VCD media).

It is a joke to give any filipino an anti-piracy award **UNTIL THE FUCKING CDs ARE OFF THE FUCKING STREETS**.

But hey, personally I don’t give a shit. Who cares about Bong Revilla, heya? Who, in the philippines, where the minimum wage (and even in Metro Manila, where the median wage is higher than anywhere else in the country) cares about multinational media companies? When the median wage in Metro Manila (did i say that it was higher than the median wage anywhere else in the country? Oh, I forgot to say that in some parts of the country people STARVE to death [no joke, that is literally true] because there isn’t enough to eat? well, during El Nino season anyway). And, by the way, the cost of any legal CD is at least twice, and often three times the daily salary of regular workers?

There is something wrong with USian media-capitalist values. Perhaps it’s simply ignorance. And if it isn’t, well, I’m not going to much care. And as a practical matter, heh, good luck on the anti-piracy campaign. You sure aren’t going to fucking make a dent in the Philippines until you bribe some corrupt congresspersons to make copyright infringement into a death penalty offence. And do you really want to do that? Oh, you do?!!! well, think about it again. The first pirate given the death penalty will be a cause celebre and will probably cause the DEATH of your fucking corporations.