“Not many people are scrupulous about smuggling when, without perjury, they can find any safe and easy opportunity of doing so. To pretend to have any scruple about buying smuggled goods…would in most countries be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy…”
–Adam Smith, The Wealth of the Nations
There’s significant evidence that not everyone is given opportunities to procure legally-sanctioned materials when access, price, and means for it are impossible to bear. Now for someone to vehemently denounce piracy in the Philippines is a fool. Look around; the ingenuity of the Pinoy handiwork is translated through bootlegged materials, from household appliances to SPAM. Note the difference: a pirated version is considerably much cheaper than the original work. It’s not pretty or lawful but it exists. And it’s a strong force. Thus one wonders why the clamor against piracy is at its loudest from big, multi-national distribution companies. Was it because the bulk of price from these expensive original materials are their doing alone? Make no mistake: Despite scourged with little resources and accessibility, most people will not patronize bootlegged work if their original counterpart was conveniently available and sold reasonably and equitably. But reality is, in most cases, price outweighs the rules.
Authors of original work regard piracy as a long standing problem because it violates their very copyright protection. But many of them, in some extent, support the distribution mechanism of piracy especially if theirs were censored or prohibited for public release and exhibition. Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza, a Best Director awardee at Cannes Film Festival whose films are revered in countries around the world but his, often wanders around Quiapo for pirated copies of his most notably R-rated and provocative films. During a CNN profile on the filmmaker, Mendoza toured around Manila’s mecca of unreal and shared that he really doesn’t have problems on how they are acquired but he desires that his films be viewed by more Filipinos.
Piracy thus somewhat bridges the gap of limited access, censorship, and inequitable distribution of original work that most creative authors find difficulty addressing in the past. Of course, with the absence of big distribution companies, piracy is arguably independent media’s biggest support yet. The degree by which piracy has evolved in recent years surpasses its corresponding consequences. Many argued that even if acquired through web or peer-to-peer sharing and it’s not used further for profit but personal use only, digital piracy is tolerable. Or in cases of territorial restrictions during worldwide releases of printed media, piracy addresses the window of delay these situations may provide. Piracy has also conquered the digital divide which segmented media and information in many levels: exclusivity, socio-economic class, access, among others. If it never intends to be a lucrative business, its purpose will be just that: alternative resource for all, or a fresh venue where exclusive patronage (usually reserved for those who can afford) is destroyed.Piracy in general sense is a terrible concept, especially in a society which puts high premium on profit as consequence of doing business. It’s justified if authors of original work are denied of their exclusive rights to the material, and subsequent cut for distribution and sales. But it surely provided an outlet, albeit notoriously underground, for free diffusion of information, knowledge-sharing and entertainment to a certain extent. It never proposes but piracy paves the way for knowledge to break through confinement and be shared beyond their intended purpose and end users – conciliation, nonetheless, to a perfidy against copyright.
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