There's The Rub / Encounters

There's The Rub
Encounters
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer

First posted 11:32pm (Mla time) Jan 10, 2006


A FRIEND of mine asked me if I had any thoughts about initiatives that could help bridge the divide between Muslims and Christians in this country. He and some colleagues were looking for instances of dialogue, or cultural encounters, that promoted peace, or curbed hostilities, between those warring factions.

I said half in jest that my friend would do better looking for those instances not in the south but right here in the city. As far as I knew, I said, the perfect model for Christian-Muslim harmony was to be found in Quiapo. Nothing spoke of the heights of mutual tolerance than the Quiapo Church, bastion of Catholicism, on one side of the street coexisting with the Muslim mosque, citadel of Islam, on the other side of it.

Thinking about it later, however, I realized it wasn't a joke at all. A perfectly serious case could be made for it. The "taming of the Moro [native Muslim] quarter" in Quiapo should make for an interesting study, academic or otherwise, offering as it does a wealth of insights into how to turn swords into plowshares.

Not too long ago, the place was a virtual no-man's land. During Alfredo Lim's time as mayor of Manila, in particular, the "Muslim center," as it was often referred to, which is that side of Quiapo opposite the Quiapo Church, past the underpass, all the way to Arlegui, Globo de Oro, and the other small clogged streets that run through there like the arteries of someone badly needing a heart bypass, was whispered with the same awe and dread as "Tondo" in the 1960s. It was not uncommon to find "salvage" victims there. Nor was it uncommon to find close encounters of the bloody kind between cops and robbers there, the robbers disappearing into the folds of the place as into a foggy redoubt and the cops refusing to follow. Many a cop that did so failed to come out alive.

That at least was the image that gripped the public mind, aided in no small way by the tabloids that screamed the mayhem in bold headlines. Until a few years ago, vestiges of that unsavory reputation still clung to that place. When I told people that the cheapest place to buy DVDs was in Quiapo, specifically the Muslim area, some of them were aghast and marveled at my intrepidness in venturing that far afield. I assured them there was nothing fearful about the place, it was nowhere near the wild frontier they supposed it to be. The wariness has disappeared almost completely today. The place is still a sprawl, dirty and grimy, and muddy on rainy days, but it is also home particularly on weekends to Mitsubishi Pajero and Honda CRV sports utility vehicles, parked on its periphery, in the area under the Quiapo Bridge. Or what used to be called "Isle de Tulle," the Frenchified "ilalim ng tulay," or under the bridge.

What had wrought this amazing transformation? The DVDs, of course.

Or more accurately the "pirated DVDs," which can be bought for a song in those parts, or however P50 counts these days. The periodic raids of Edu Manzano's henchmen notwithstanding, which look more and more like an elaborate ritual taken for PR purposes, the DVD market grows by leaps and bounds. The fringes are caught up in it too and keep expanding. The downside I leave the believers in intellectual property rights to argue. The upside is that you find no quarrels between the inebriated crowd that heaves the Black Nazarene through the streets on its feast day shouting pious litanies and the sober one loudly chanting praises to Allah particularly during the lean and hungry days of Ramadan. If that isn't tolerance, I don't know what is.

Two things I gather from this, which could have some bearing on the work of peace advocates. One is that the presumed animosity between Christians and Muslims in this country is more imagined than real. I don't know how it is in Muslim Mindanao, I suspect it is just as exaggerated. The animosity hasn't seeped into the level of the man in the street. I do know that in the Visayas, there are still numerous reminders of the Moro piratical raids. Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, as I learned some years ago, means "tago B'laan," or to hide from the pirates. I do know that the Feast of the Cross in some parts of Leyte is related to the many miracles the Cross of Christ apparently worked to protect Visayan communities from the Moro pirates in Spanish times.

But I don't know that the animosity is active today among ordinary folk. The distrust seems to have less to do with the idea of a Moro stabbing you in the back than with him stabbing you in the pocket. Courtesy of all those jokes about the Moro trader, but which are no more and no less than the jokes about the sly Chinese and shrewd Bombay.

The second and more important thing you can glean from the experience is that you turn people into stakeholders, or give them a stake in peace, you get peace. People who have a source of livelihood will not imperil their source of livelihood. Today, the "barangay" [neighborhood district] council in the Muslim quarter zealously keeps the peace there, fearful that any mugging or bloodletting could ward off the droves of visitors that regularly descend on it. Of course some people will argue that pirated DVDs, which for reasons I have yet to fathom have become a Moro franchise-they're the ones selling the thing even in Baguio City, or so someone tells me-are not unlike Colombian cocaine. And some will say the pirated DVDs suggest that Moros have not gotten over their time-honored skullduggery. I disagree completely, though I'll leave my arguments there for another day. Suffice it for me to say that the only thing that suggests skull and crossbones from where I stand are the periodical raids of Edu's men which take on the aspect of Francis Drake's one-eyed and toothless men looting the loot-laden Spanish galleons.

By the way, have you seen the early works of Ingmar Bergman...?

Editor's Note: Published on Page A12 of the January 11, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

There's The Rub / Still, Isle of Tortuga

There's The Rub
Still, Isle of Tortuga
by Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service

First posted 10:12pm (Mla time) Sept 08, 2004


I DID see one unpleasant thing in the stalls that sold pirated DVDs in Quiapo last weekend. That was the presence among them of local titles. In the past, I used to see only movies starring Sharon Cuneta, Judy Ann Santos (I think) and various action ones. This time I saw Gil Portes' "A Beautiful Life" and Joel Lamangan's "Mano Po" and "Pamilya." "Imelda" was there as well, except that, as the vendors tipped, "it wasn't DVD yet, just a clear copy." I don't know what other Filipino movies are sold there. They weren't in all the stalls, only in some of them.

I draw the line at buying local stuff. That has been my policy all this time, and that has been the policy I've recommended to government all this time. That was the advice I gave Tito Sotto a couple of years ago when he asked to meet with me on the subject. He was then head of the Senate committee on intellectual property rights, which covered piracy. I said the only rational policy was to stop the pirating of local movies and CDs. You cannot stop piracy completely, that is a hopeless cause. The technology is there. You can no more bind the explosion in productive capabilities to old property rights than you can cage King Kong in the zoo. But you can at least curb, if not stop, the pirating of local movies and CDs.

You can do that by running only after those who sell pirated local movies and CDs. I'm sure you can appeal to the public's patriotic sentiments to not buy the pirated local stuff. I'm just as sure you won't find resistance, or cynical reaction, to cops swooping down on the pirates' lair and carting off bundles of pirated local movies and CDs. The public might even applaud them.

The justification for such a policy should be national interest and not moral scruple. The reason is simple: You make moral scruple the basis for running after people selling, or buying, pirated movies and music CDs, you have to run as well after those selling, or buying, pirated software. It's the same principle.

But you do the latter and the country will grind to a halt. The educational system will grind to a halt, the banks and courts will grind to a halt, the entire government will grind to a halt. That is because easily 99 percent of the computers in this country use pirated operating systems and pirated programs.

That includes the computers of the entertainers who are fulminating against piracy. That includes the computers of Bong Revilla, ex-Videogram Regulatory Board head and current senator, and Edu Manzano, ex-TV host and current board head. The day they are able to show their press statements are written on licensed Microsoft Word from computers booted with licensed Windows XP is the day I join their crusade without reservation. Otherwise, they're just being hypocrites.

Sotto's office did call me a couple of years ago to say a bill incorporating my suggestions (making the pirating of local movies and CDs, on ground of national interest, illegal and punishable by law) was being prepared. I don't know if it was ever finished, if it got to the floor of the Senate, or if it met with furious opposition from various lobbies. But clearly it hasn't been enacted, freeing Manzano to mount his movie antics in real life.

It is the only reasonable policy toward "piracy"--which I put in quotation marks because the GATT-WTO concept of intellectual property rights is itself piratical; at least the pirates of Tortuga stole from the rich, this one steals from the poor. More so now than ever. There are two new and compelling reasons why this is so.

The first is that the selling of pirated DVDs gives livelihood to the ragged urban denizens who might otherwise take to crime--this is not so, to anticipate the snide remarks of Bill Gates' representatives on earth--to bring food to the table. That is no mean feat particularly in these days of great want, and coming days of even greater want. The last thing we need is to add more unemployment to the country, particularly among the ranks of the Muslim poor in Metro Manila, who for some reason seem to have monopolized the retail trade in pirated DVDs. It's not a matter of preference, it's a matter of survival.

In fact, the last thing we need is government using our taxes to keep an office that exists to protect foreign interests. I don't mind that the portion of my pay I am forced to part with goes to supporting local artists, I do mind that it goes to protecting Paramount and 20th Century Fox.

The second is that, well, do you want to keep this country ignorant? Education is its own justification. The United States itself did not mind pirating British books to enlighten its nationals before 1776. If it hadn't done so, it might still be a British colony. I personally do not mind being reproduced all over the place (which I am), if that will improve people's minds. I'm shareware entirely, the spirit that happily still rules the Internet.

The explosion in DVD titles, which now include Hollywood classics as well as movies from other countries, is particularly welcome. My own take there is that this should help the more serious makers of local movies by enlarging the scope of their market. Currently, they have to cater to a market whose taste has been molded by Hollywood "blockbusters" and B action movies. The availability of the classic movies should raise the Filipino taste several notches higher, which should boost the chances of the Lino Brockas and Ishmael Bernals of this country peddling their wares.

Bong Revilla was just lucky, there is no political future in raiding the lost ark. Edu Manzano should really stop to think before he makes his next move. Or he may end up at the receiving end of his favorite barb in "Weakest Link." Which is: "Goodbye."

Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the September 9, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

http://web.archive.org/web/20060104181646/http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=9729&col=77

Twisted / Copy This

> Copy This
Jessica Zafra


Does anyone else find it funny that people who make much more money than we do are appealing to us not to deprive them of their income? You have the nerve to charge me P450 for a CD that is being sold on the street for P60, and you expect my sympathy?

The campaign against pirated software, CDs, VCDs, audio- and videocassettes, would have us believe that piracy is our problem. Really? How is shelling out P100 for a disc that contains P50,000 worth of software a problem for me? It would seem that the pirates are doing me, and my shrinking wallet, a big favor. Why should it bother me that a movie which has not yet opened in Metro Manila theatres is being peddled on VCD on Ayala Avenue for P90? I have no fight with the pirates. They are selling me information I might otherwise not have access to because of prohibitive costs. Yes they are thieves and thieves should be punished, but they are not stealing from me. Oh sure, you can lecture me about how in the long run I will pay for buying bootleg, but by then I will have used the information for my benefit.

So let me make a correction. Piracy is the problem of the manufacturers —the software houses, record companies, and motion picture companies—whom I shall refer to from hereon as the corporations. By telling us not to buy pirated materials "for the good of everyone," corporations make it appear that corporate interests and the public interest are the same thing. This is laughably untrue. Corporations make noises about working in the public interest—these noises are called public relations, PR—but their duty is to their owners.

The anti-piracy ads, with their appeals to my virtue, pass the responsibility of combating piracy to me. HELLO. They invoke the law and call on my conscience to protect their profit margin, but when I shell out P450 for a CD that turns out to be crap, I can't invoke the law, and corporations have no conscience. We may all be equal under the law, but they have the best lawyers. I guess their complaints are valid because they stand to lose more money, while I'm just a sucker who bought the promotional hype.

The anti-piracy campaign says that when we buy unauthorized copies, a.k.a. bootleg, we are stealing from the creators of the music, movies, or computer programs. This would be the case if the proceeds of the sales went to the artists themselves. We know that the artists get a small royalty; most of the money goes to the corporations. They profit from the work of the artists. In exchange for a small royalty, they can suck their artists dry. Their excuse is that they spent vast sums of money on the marketing of the artists' work. In short, the reason "originals" cost so much is because the huge marketing expenses are passed on to us. Why should we finance the ridiculous costs of hype?

When you buy bootleg, you deny the artist a couple of bucks, but you stick it to the corporation, which is so rich it won’t even say ouch. I find it hard to summon up any sympathy for a multi-billion dollar entity that does business in over 100 countries. Aww, the poor corporations, their executives won't be buying personal Lear jets this quarter. Buying bootleg has a Robin Hood appeal: Rob the rich to give the poor, meaning you. It's the opposite of jueteng, in which one robs the poor in order to give to the rich.

The corporations are laying a massive guilt trip on the consumers when they should be working to make their products less easy to steal. With the technology we have, it is extremely easy to make high-quality copies of anything. In the past we worried that bootleg goods could damage our electronic equipment; today's fake CDs are almost exactly like the originals. While the corporations are piracy-proofing their wares, maybe they should cut us a break and drop their prices. The pirates have shown that it is possible to make CDs cheaper. Take the hint, and spare us the sob stories about high marketing costs and your dwindling profits.

I don't buy pirated software—not just because pirates don't usually do Mac programs, but because I love my Mac. But I can not tell PC users not to buy bootleg software when it costs one-fiftieth the price of the original. Caveat emptor, naturally, and the fake software may cause their PCs to crash, but PCs do that anyway. Hey, doesn't the idea of bilking Bill Gates of .000000000000000000(add more zeroes)1 of his income appeal to you? Look at him, the guy's rolling in money, but he won't spend for a proper haircut. Besides, if you really want to quibble over it, didn't Bill Gates and Steve Jobs borrow information from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center?

Cut the crap, and stop appealing to my good nature. It is not my job to protect your interests. The pirates are sleazy, but they have inadvertently raised the possibility of a future in which the artist reaches her audience directly, without a corporate middleman. Think of a future in which you profit from your own ideas. Not bloody likely, right, but it's a good thought.