OMB: Getting the upper hand in fight vs video piracy

Last Sunday morning, I woke up to an ANC’s "XXX" report showing how Optical Media Board (OMB) operatives raided stalls selling pirated movies in VCD and DVD formats in various parts of Metro Manila last May 18. The raids were conducted with an ANC cameraman in tow just a day after the showing of the controversial movie The Da Vinci Code and pirated copies of the Tom Hanks movie were already on sale in the different markets, sidewalks and even in some shopping centers.

Of course even here in Cebu, I learned that pirated copies of The Da Vinci Code have been on sale but many buyers discovered that what was actually inside the casing was the National Geographic Special about the controversial book, from which the film was based.

It used to be that these video pirates had an honor code that would even shame the best shopping stores in this country, which usually insist on a "no-return, no-exchange policy." If you buy a DVD that is defective, you can have them replaced at the stall where you bought it. What’s even amazing is that, even if you didn’t buy the DVD from a particular street seller, the other sellers would give you a replacement.

Well, not anymore. Vendors of pirated movies are now trying to con their buyers. I remember that they also did this to the movie version of the hit musical Phantom of the Opera. Some early buyers of the film have bought an old movie with the same title.

Now they’re doing this to The Da Vinci Code, which should tell you that video pirates would now do anything to get your money.

I’m glad to know that OMB Chairman Edu Manzano now has a crack team that conducts the raids. At least they now have the upper hand! However, he must also create similar teams in every major city in this country before we can say that we’ve licked this problem. In Cebu, for instance, pirates openly sell DVDs in huge boxes and even hawks them near the McDonalds or Jollibee drive-through or even in various offices. Somehow the police are not told to arrest these people carrying boxfulls of DVDs. If only the police are alerted on this...then that would be the beginning of the end of video piracy.

Right now, in Cebu the most prominent person fighting piracy in her own way is Ma. Lourdes Mangaoang, a Cebu Port District Collector who has confiscated many DVDs and other pirated material that pass through the Cebu Port. Recently, even the Commissioner of the Korean Customs Service lauded her for successfully confiscating 10 stolen Korean cars (mostly Kia Sorentos) that arrived in Cebu. Yes, in Cebu a number of stolen Korean cars have been peddled by unscrupulous car dealers who sell them way below the selling price of the Korean car dealers.

While credit must be given where it is due, allow me to say that OMB Chairman Edu Manzano has done more in the anti-piracy campaign than all his predecessors combined. However, he still has a long way to go in this war before we could be taken off the priority watchlist of the United States government.

That would only come when sellers would refuse to sell these items. But right now they are openly selling pirated items in places were the OMB is not around.

Lastly, we saw where pirated DVDs are being sold and we saw them raided by the OMB team. What we’d like to see more are arrests if manufacturers of these DVDs and, perhaps more importantly, that they be meted stiff jail sentences.

So far, the biggest allies of the OMB are television programs like ANC’s "XXX." This is one television show that’s needed in this country. Unfortunately, while ABS-CBN shows this nationwide, the their local stations nationwide have not been showing the program.

I was especially amused by the lifestyle check report of our good friend Ms. Karen Davila on the Department of Finance (DOF), where the police did an entrapment operation against a DOF operative who was extorting a police officer. It is exposés like this that puts government officials or even their lowly workers on their toes.

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Last Friday evening, with nothing much to do, I brought my family to our theater in downtown Cebu City to watch The Da Vinci Code. That’s because we’ve seen, read or heard more than enough about this controversy depicting author Dan Brown not as a writer of fiction but as a deceiver because in writing his fictional story, he attempted to rewrite history without any real research. Perhaps the best documentary about his deception was "The Da Vinci Code Deception," which was featured in the Cebu Catholic Television Network (CCTN) ran by the Cebu Archdiocese.

As I said in previous columns, I didn’t care to buy Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code simply because way back in the early ’80s, I bought and read a similar book entitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Interestingly, these authors sued Dan Brown for plagiarism in London, but lost their case simply because the judge virtually told these authors that they didn’t have any rights to their respective stories because these were taken from ancient manuscripts, like the Gnostics, which we know were theories already rejected by the Catholic Church for heresy.

If these heresies were rejected 1,700 years ago, surely the Catholic Church and other mainstream Protestant Churches would not embrace these simply because a man named Dan Brown makes wild accusations in his poorly researched book without double checking the facts. We’ve already written much about those lies, so let’s put this issue to rest.

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Kudos to Mr. Henry Sy of SM for the opening of Asia’s biggest shopping mall. Now there’s a mall that I need to visit the next time I visit Manila. Perhaps a greater tribute to Mr. Henry Sy is his courage that a reader asked me to point out — for not showing any film with an R-18 Rating. I checked this with my good friend SM VP Ric Camaligan and he told me it was true, which is why they didn’t’ show "The Da Vinci Code" in all SM theaters nationwide. That means only wholesome movies are shown in SM theaters, which is something that no other theater group can claim. God Bless you, Mr. Henry Sy!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s column in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine Star website at www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show entitled "Straight from the Sky" shown every Monday in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable at 8 p.m.