Who owns what?

Stealing happens very often.

Sometimes we feel like sharing our ideas to the world and it's the beginning of granting others access to our work. That's not new, in fact, it's normal. It's how imagination flows through minds of the creatives.

Artists: filmmakers, storytellers, and designers look up to prominent people in the industry as guide in performing their craft. You pick a detail from someone and then you develop your own.

But in respect to copyright, how thin does the line go between inspiration and plagiarism? And much bigger question is, how do we know if it is legal or not.

There is a very vague spot for digital outputs under the Philippine Law. Reasons are it is a new stuff and our judiciary system is not only old but obsolete.

The law dictates that the original intellectual creations in the literary and artistic domain are copyrightable. These include books, pamphlets, articles and other writings; periodicals and newspapers; lectures, sermons, addresses, dissertations prepared for oral delivery; letters; dramatic or dramatico-musical compositions; choreographic works or entertainment in dumb shows; musical compositions; drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving, lithography; models or designs for works of art; original ornamental designs or models for articles of manufacture; illustrations, maps, plans, sketches, charts and three-dimensional works relative to geography, topography, architecture or science; drawings or plastic works of a scientific or technical character; photographic works including works produced by a process analogous to photography; lantern slides; audiovisual works and cinematographic works and works produced by a process analogous to cinematography or any process for making audio-visual recordings; pictorial illustrations and advertisements and computer programs.

However, there are also works that are not protected by copyright under the Philippine law, including (1) idea, procedure, system method or operation, concept, principle, discovery or mere data as such, even if they are expressed, explained, illustrated or embodied in a work; (2) News of the day and other miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information; (3) Official text of a legislative, administrative or legal nature, as well as any official translation thereof; (4) Work of the Philippine Government, unless there was a prior approval by the appropriate government agency; and (5) Statutes, rules and regulations, and speeches, lectures, sermons, addresses, and dissertations, pronounced, read or rendered in courts of justice, before administrative agencies, in deliberative assemblies and in meetings of public character.

In this case of not knowing what is just, where do we draw the line? Who is ccountable? What do we own? The Philippine Law can never tell but our conscience knows.