Monday, November 13, 2006 Council wants Ched to stop unauthorized book copies By GingGing A. Campaña Of Sun.Star Cebu
PHOTOCOPYING is a godsend to students who cannot afford to buy new textbooks on a tight budget and a lucrative business for photocopying machine owners and operators.
But they may soon face problems once the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) acts on a resolution the Cebu City Council passed recently.
The council has requested the Ched to coordinate with the Intellectual Property Office and law enforcement agencies for measures that will curb the illegal reproduction of books and other reading materials.
Rising cost of education has compelled students to have expensive, hard to find or locally unavailable textbooks photocopied instead.
Photocopying, especially near schools and universities, is a profitable business in Cebu City.
“While this trade offers an inexpensive way for students to reproduce reading materials, it cannot be denied that students and owners of these establishments may have wittingly or unwittingly committed copyright infringement,” read the resolution authored by Councilor Eugenio Faelnar.
He heads the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) and represents the group as an ex-officio member to the City Council.
Faelnar said that another form of book piracy is “committed by the unauthorized mass distribution of books, wherein culprits use sophisticated technology in order to produce pirated copies, which appear indistinguishable from the original.”
“This illegal trade results to a decrease in tax revenues for the government, denies the author income and decreases profits in the legal book trade,” the measure read.
According to a National Book Development Board study, some 300 billion illegal photocopies of copyrighted materials are made worldwide each year, or 570,000 photocopies made each minute from 1.5 billion 200-page books yearly.
“On the surface, there’s no harm done-just one student photocopying a book,” said Book Development Association of the Philippines officer and former Philippine Reproduction Rights Organizations chairman Rolando de Vera.
“But it’s become a way of life for most students. The publishing industry suffers, but it’s the writers who lose because they don’t get royalties if people photocopy their books,” he said in a Philippine Daily Inquirer report.
