Residing on a small town that was able to produce a President of the Republic of the Philippines, watching movies on the big screen is no longer a practice. There used to be two movie houses in the 80’s and 90’s, one in our town and the other on the neighboring town. Movie houses in the countryside usually have this double feature format that means you get to watch two movies for a fee. One Filipino movie usually of the action or comedy genre and one foreign film with a Chinese martial arts theme (notably the Kung-Fu Kids series) or an American B-movie are what usually shown. With no air conditioning, air circulation inside is done by two large industrial fans and anyone you came across after watching knows where you’ve been by the way you stink… courtesy of the fascist smoking movie goers. The other movie house, the one on another town, is modern at that time for it can play movies by using the Betamax and VHS formats and also because you won’t smell funky after watching. Since it can play movies out of cassettes, they had a much wider selection of movies but catered to a select audience that might have a hand in ballooning our countries population to 80 billion.
A lot has changed since the 80’s and 90’s. The movie houses have closed prompting people to look for other sources of entertainment fix. Cheap DVD players have popped up courtesy of merchants down south with a price tag a tenth of the branded ones which for the good of everybody prompted OEMs to lower their prices. Usually not at par with branded ones when it comes to durability, one can practically watch a movie all over again and depending on how many times you’ve played it, the cost incurred (discounting electricity) in buying one disc is negligible. Piracy has taken a new form and definition and with the help of advancements in technology has found its double-edged ally.
The Philippines is a hotbed of pirated materials, name it… I’m sure we have it. From audio, software, movies etc. For a couple of years, we were stricken off from the US watch list but unfortunately, were back this year singling out the notorious Quiapo area.
How do you solve a problem like piracy? There are raids as seen on the evening news but mostly in the Manila area. But even with the raids, I bet one can still purchase pirated materials in Manila… even in malls. Pirated materials have widened its reach ironically because of the raids in the cities. When things gets hot, pirates move to provinces where the arm of the law is not for upholding the law but for receiving cash in exchange for protection. Sometimes I suspect that they simply don’t care and worst, they insist it’s not their jurisdiction, as the Optical Media Board (OMB) must handle the raids.
The local art scene is aching from piracy. A Filipino music artist can only dream of a platinum album award and are now limited to gold album awards. Similarly, a Filipino movie perceived to be less than a blockbuster turns out to be a flop. The difference, compared with American artists, is that even if there’s such a thing as piracy, their artists’ still ends up millionaires (in US$). The only screwed party is the producer who by the way still makes millions.
There were reports that pirated materials are money-making machineries of terrorist organizations. The only way to not contribute to such organizations is to buy the original material. But if you don’t have the money and as there is always another way, downloading movies (started with MP3’s and now even software downloads are available) using the Torrent technology from the Internet is the way to go. But downloading movies via the Internet without shaving a few bucks is still a form of piracy on a legal standpoint. It may take away the guilt feeling of aiding terrorists with their dastardly acts but somehow one is indirectly aiding their cause and movie executives are not happy with it.
So comes the question… Who started piracy in the first place? According to an article published by Wired Magazine (Issue of March 2004), it’s the people who built Hollywood. In order to avoid paying Thomas Alva Edison for royalties from using his motion picture technology, they moved to the west coast and the rest is history.
Bad karma? As Austin Powers would say… Maybe.
As for me, a movie aficionado by the age of 6, I only get to watch movies on the big screen whenever I go to Manila. On a recent trip, I enjoyed watching Iron Man in full THX glory (190 pesos at Greenbelt – 4.5 US$). I enjoyed it so much that I might… armed with the cheapest and slowest broadband connection… download it from the net as soon as it’s available.
