While I do not agree with anti-circumvention legislations like the US DMCA, the problem is the Philippine has an obligation under international law to implement legislation involving technological protection measures (TPM). This can be found the WIPO Copyright Treaty which provides that that:
-- Article 11 (Obligations concerning Technological Measures) "Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law." -- Article 12 (Obligations concerning Rights Management Information) "(1) Contracting Parties shall provide adequate and effective legal remedies against any person knowingly performing any of the following acts knowing, or with respect to civil remedies having reasonable grounds to know, that it will induce, enable, facilitate or conceal an infringement of any right covered by this Treaty or the Berne Convention: (i) to remove or alter any electronic rights management information without authority; (ii) to distribute, import for distribution, broadcast or communicate to the public, without authority, works or copies of works knowing that electronic rights management information has been removed or altered without authority. (2) As used in this Article, "rights management information" means information which identifies the work, the author of the work, the owner of any right in the work, or information about the terms and conditions of use of the work, and any numbers or codes that represent such information, when any of these items of information is attached to a copy of a work or appears in connection with the communication of a work to the public." However, while the Philippines is required to adopt TPM legislation, it is granted sufficient flexibility to adapt it to the local context and build in the necessary safeguards and exceptions. This means that our TPM law does not have to the same as the US DMCA. In this light, the key then is to make sure that the legislation conforms to conditions here and there is reasonable leeway and flexibility in the law for important rights and principles such as fair use, limitations and exceptions to anti-circumvention, rules on anti-competitive acts, etc. It seems inevitable that a Philippine law on TPM will be passed. What needs to be done is to ensure that how TPMs is implemented or enforced in the country is not too restricting and limiting as that found in the US DMCA. Bong Dizon On Jan 15, 2008 10:37 PM, Dax Solomon Umaming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tuesday 15 January 2008 9:27:56 pm William Yu wrote: > > DMCA philippine edition > > > > ________________ Reply Header ________________ > > Subject: [ce-gnu-lug] Alert!!! DRM in the Philippines? > > Author: Manny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Date: January 15th 2008 11:27 am > > ***trim*** > > Our tax money at work. Now I feel bad I gave him my vote > > -- > Dax Solomon Umaming > http://knightlust.com/ > GPG: 0x715C3547 > > _________________________________________________ > Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List > [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) > Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists > Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph > -- ---------------------------------------------------- bong dizon law.norms.code http://lawnormscode.sync.ph
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