The government agency in-charge of running after pirates of movie and television content admits it’s toothless against online piracy, where most illegal activity has shifted.
The Optical Media Board (OMB) is unable to check online piracy because its legal mandate, Republic Act 9239, was passed way back in 2003, and was designed to outlaw only bootlegged discs.
“We are basically a storage-based regulatory agency,” OMB Chairman Anselmo Adriano said during a recent Senate budget hearing.
The OMB is used to conducting raids of establishments selling pirated discs. In the past three years, it seized over P3 billion worth of optical media discs over the past three years.
Since January, it has seized a total of 428,505 pirated optical media products with an estimated value of P219 million, and 1,673 USB flash drives.
The latest data indicated a drastic reduction in the retail of optical media discs or DVDs — approximately 57 percent over the past three years, Adriano said.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who presided over the budget hearing, agreed that the OMB law was “antiquated.”
“The law is quite antiquated already and it is good practice to update our laws from time to time, especially taking into consideration advancements in technology and trends around the world. So, we’re very open and we request OMB to submit their legislative proposals,” he said. (PressONE.ph)