Sociological Perspectives on Media Piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam

This book addresses the persistence of the optical media piracy trade in the Philippines and Vietnam. It goes beyond arguments of defective law enforcement and copyright legal systems by applying sociological perspectives to examine the socio-economic forces behind the advent of piracy in the region. Using documentary and ethnographic data, in addition to resistance and ecological theories in sociology of law and technology as the overall theoretical framework, the book investigates factors that contribute to this phenomenon and factors that impede the full formalization of the optical media trade in the two countries. These factors include the government's attitude towards the informal sector and strong resistance to tougher IPR protection, unstable and sometimes conflicting policies on technologies, burdensome business registration process and weak enforcement of business regulations, bureaucratic corruption and loopholes in law enforcement system as well as trade ties with China. In addition to that, the book highlights the social background of the actors behind the illegal business of counterfeit CDs and DVDs, thereby explaining the reasons they continue to persist in this type of trade. It invites policymakers, law enforcers, advocates of anti-piracy groups, and the general public to use a more holistic lens in understanding the persistence of copyright piracy in developing countries, shifting the blame from the moral defect of the traders to the current problematic copyright policy and enforcement structure, and the difficulty of crafting effective anti-piracy measures in a constantly evolving and advancing technological environment.

Dr. Vivencio O. Ballano is a Professor of Sociology and Law at St. Paul University, Quezon City, Philippines. His specialized areas of teaching and research include Sociology of Law and Religion, Optical Media Law, Constitutional Law, Disaster Management Law and Copyright Counterfeiting. He obtained his doctoral degree in Sociology from the Ateneo de Manila University in 2011 and was chosen as a 2012 Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of the Southeast Asian Studies Research Exchange Program (SEASREP). He has read papers in local and international conferences and published articles in journals mostly on the area of copyright piracy. He has also published a textbook for his course on Politics, Government, and the Philippine Constitution. He is a founding Board Member of the Philippine Association for the Sociology of Religion (PASR) and a member of the Philippine Sociological Society (PSS). In 2013, St. Paul University recognised his research work by awarding him the Best Researcher Award for that year.