Movie Piracy affect Young Filipino minds…

By Aaron Testado   

    In the Philippines pirated films are rampant on sidewalks and market places. You can buy VCD/DVD ( sometimes a set of 10 movies ) on just a dollar. As a regular consumer I also buy pirated DVD for my own pleasure and I enjoy watching it even though its content is not as good as original DVD. You can buy Movies that not yet ready for playing on big cinema, ahead of the so called "SHOWING" time. One thing really amazed me that you can't buy local DVD/VCD movies ahead of its showing dates. Foreign movies are set to release first than on cinema. So people tend to buy pirated movies instead of watching foreign movies on the big screen. I saw these as an advantage of our local film maker because foreign film maker will not get much of their income. Imagine 90% of their income fall on the hand of sidewalk vendors vending pirated copies of their movies at almost 95% more cheaper and 75% less quality.  Even though its quality is not good most of the Filipino consumer buy pirated they just want to see the movies that's it. While local Film maker will don't  have a much competition for their films but they are busy pushing people in the big screen that they play their movies for 5 weeks in the Cinema houses nationwide and restrict pirated copies to be sold on the sidewalks. That's the big ideas here, avoiding foreign films competition by allowing foreign film to be sold on black market and then restricting local film piracy.

    Beyond this many advantages there are big issues here like pornography that even a six year old child can buy porn movies in the sidewalks. Vendors of pirated products  are up on their income not on the effects of their product. The Government is look like tolerating this, even though there are agency specifically for these kind of issues its effort are less to fight this big problem. You can saw malls and sidewalks market being raided for many times but go back after a week vendors are back vending again in the same place that the police and media board raided before. I'm thinking that government law enforcers are not serious fighting these problems for their not saw this problems as problems at all. They don't realized that this porn movies can be a root of all rape cases and other criminal violation. Media Board are regulating movies for mass audience they rate movies by who will watch it in the cinema and other public places as PG-13, GP, R18, PG and so on. Tolerating movie piracy on local market of the Philippines are just as good as throwing monies of the public tax payers paying  for the Media Board agency because why rating it? If a child can acquire porn or other strong content movies on the sidewalk as good as candies? 

    Imagine a child watching R18 movies or a strong content action movies, this will promote crimes like robbery, hold-up, kidnapping, murder, rape, terrorism and other unimaginable crimes in the near future. Police and law enforcer are indirect psychologically developing these minors as future criminals. Did you watch DISCOVERY CHANNEL? Their series the "Hollywood shoot out" that the bad guys are being motivated indirectly by the movie "HEAT" to promote bank robbery and a memorable shoot out incident in the US.

    Media and communication is good as a whole but being uncontrolled promote violence. I hope readers can get my point on publishing this article.