Writers and copyright 2

Here is the rest of the talk I gave during the “Punto de Vista: Copyright in the Digital Environment” forum held at the Instituto Cervantes on April 25:

Chapter 8, Section 184.1h, of Part 4 of Republic Act 8293 allows any educational, scientific, or professional institution to claim public interest. That means that schools can argue that they do not violate copyright when they photocopy literary works for their students. The government, which has control over the vast majority of our schools, could otherwise be the major source of income for writers.

If the Law on Copyright were to be amended, these are the amendments that should be made. Si la ley en el derecho de autor será enmendada, éstos son las enmiendas que deben ser hechas.

Allow me to change gears, to move away from legalities, and to speak a little bit about the way the rights of creative writers have been placed in grave danger because of technology. Pag-usapan naman natin ang epekto ng Web sa mga karapatan ng mga manunulat. Hablamos de escritores y tecnología.

It is now as easy as clicking a mouse to cut and paste entire works by writers. Even if the moral rights of writers were respected through proper acknowledgment, it is clear that their economic rights are not. Writers do not earn anything from the reproduction of their works on the Web.

It is, in fact, impossible for writers to earn anything from the Web, not only because plagiarism is the rule rather than the exception on the Web, but because it is very difficult to find a way of paying writers. There are thousands, perhaps millions of websites, created by students as part of their classroom work. On these websites, entire works are very often reproduced. Web 2.0 cannot be policed; that is against the very nature of Web 2.0. Therefore, writers find themselves again on the losing end. Los escritores son siempre perdedores. Kawawa naman kaming mga manunulat.

Some say that writers should be happy that their works are being read. There is no doubt that the Web has multiplied a thousand times the readership of our works. It is not unusual for writers, especially if the writers maintain popular blogs, to have hundreds of thousands of readers. Yes, writers are happy, especially if we compare the situation today with the situation before the Web, when we Filipino writers would have been lucky to have dozens or even hundreds reading us. But this is clearly merely psychic income.

Writers cannot create in a vacuum. They cannot create masterpieces if they have to earn a living doing things other than creative writing. Writers need time, time costs money, and money is exactly what writers do not make from their creative works. Necesitamos tiempo. Necesitamos dinero. Oras ang puhunan ng manunulat. Pera ang nakabibili ng oras. Kung walang pera at kulang sa oras, mahirap sumulat nang matino ang manunulat.

But not everything is hopeless. Hay esperanza. There is hope in the Filipinas Copyright Licensing Society (FILCOLS), which is trying to establish a system where universities can pay writers for reprographic rights. There is hope in the Google Books system, which has agreed to pay writers a few dollars for every book Google puts up on the Web. There is hope in the new policy of DepEd to pay writers up front for the use of their materials; this eliminates the industry practice of pretending to have gained permission from writers by publishing a disclaimer that “all efforts have been made to locate the writers.”

Hindi nawawalan ng pag-asa ang mga manunulat na, balang araw, maliliwanagan din ang isip ng mga nasa poder na kayamanan ng bayan ang malikhaing panulat. La literatura es la gema de civilización.

Not too many Philippine writers (starting from Jose Rizal, who had to beg for money from his brother to have his books published) have made money from their writing, definitely not enough money to raise a family. There are a few of us that can command a couple of million pesos as fees for writing non-creative works, but I am not talking about those big-bucks writers. I am talking of creative work, and where is the Filipino poem or short story or play or even novel that can make a million up front? ¿Dónde está el poema que gana millones?

I rest my case. Eso es todo. Yun lang.

REVISING GENERAL EDUCATION: The Commission on Higher Education recently established a Technical Panel on General Education. We hope to be able to redo the General Education Curriculum (GEC) for implementation by June 2010. If you have any ideas about the GEC, email me now ([email protected]) or forever hold thy peace!

UNESCO: The Philippines has signed so many international agreements that we sometimes forget what we signed. For example, we signed the “Road Map for Arts Education” in 2006, but only NCCA appears to have worked on the recommendations.

We signed UNESCO agreements in 1976, 1999, and 2001 mandating the use of the mother tongue for education, yet there is a bill in Congress declaring a foreign language as our sole medium of instruction.

We are outlaws in the world of international agreements.