Copyright Thief

I’m doomed. I finally succumbed to the lure of the pirates. I went to Quiapo yesterday and had a pirated DVD shopping binge. The bad part is, I don’t feel any guilt at all. Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Vertigo or hard to find arthouse pieces like Pieces of April for only 60 pesos each?! That’s just heaven for a film enthusiast like me. And that previous statement came from someone who vowed in the past to only buy the “orig”. Of course, I wasn’t really a strong anti-piracy advocate but I put in my mind (I don’t know where the conviction came from) that any form of piracy is stealing. It had been a conscious effort on my part not to buy pirated stuff. I mean, so what if the brand of my clothes is cheap? At least it’s original. So what if I only buy cheap on-sale VCDs? At least it’s legal. Maybe it’s a feeling of pride and at the same time, interestingly as I think now, deeming that by supporting pirated goods, you’re actually promoting crass commercialism all the more. I know the message is supposed to be “support piracy, kill commercialism” but I always thought otherwise. By supporting pirated goods just to have branded or upper class items, you also support the fact that these branded or upper class items are the way to go.

Okay, I don’t know what to say next.

I don’t wanna sound defensive after eating my words by shrugging, so what, these Hollywood producers earn huuuge amount of money anyway, and buying pirated stuff wouldn’t hurt them that much. I could also defend myself by saying that I only buy pirated “imported” stuff so I’m actually supporting the local industries by “killing” their foreign counterparts. The more sensible defense would be that with the advent of new technology, things such as piracy are already inevitable and instead of doing the impossible task of destroying it, the industries should just innovate the way they market and sell their products. But again, I don’t wanna sound defensive. Take a look instead at the titles I bought.

Ghost World
Far From Heaven
You Can Count On Me
All The Real Girls
Angels in America
The Believer
One Day in September
House of Flying Daggers
Thirteen
Super Size Me
XX/XY
21 Grams
Monster
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Cooler
Shaun of The Dead

Now, slap me.