Sotto immune from plagiarism raps, top aide says!
What kind of leaders run the Philippines? Well senators are above copyright laws, says an aide to Senator Sotto who was caught plagiarizing parts of a blog article.
It is not a crime to plagiarize portions from a blog article in crafting Senator Sotto's Anti reproductive-health bill speech in the Senate, asserts Atty. Hector Villacorta. The aide also feels that Senator Sotto does not have to apologize to blogger Sarah Pope of thehealthyeconomist.com, the author of the article from which Sotto copied portions, for offending the blogger's sensibilities.
Villacorta, in proclaiming his genius about copyrights, claimed that the (Internet) WWW is public domain, and that governments are exempted form copyright rules, while Sotto himself enjoys parliamentary immunity as a legislator.
Villacorta again is showing his extreme genius, about Copyrights and Public Domain:
We quote here from the
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/09/15/copyright-and-public-domain/reference:
Copyrightable works include but are not limited to literary works such as articles, blog posts, stories, journals, or computer programs, pictures and graphics, as well as audio and video recordings. Copyrights do not need not be applied for as they are vested in the creators of intellectual property. When we create something — we own the copyright, which is our exclusive right as the creator to control who else can use our work and in what manner.
Villacorta claims the blogsite [theehealthyhomeeconomist] is public domain and Senator Sotto is free to plagiarize said portions of the article. Since Sotto is a member of government, it is not a crime for him to palagiarize! Understand??
Was the blogger commercially injured? She was not! No law was violate since there is no crime!
Government and Senator Sotto in particular is exempted from the copyright rule.
Bloggers, beware what you put out on the web. You should not cry if used by the web," the genius Atty. Villacorta claimed.
We are agrieved that we have genius lawyers like Atty. Villacorta. For one, works in the public domain are those for which copyright has expired! From what I read, blog contents are copyrightable, and the copyright extends while the author is alive and 70 years after his/her death! More, the Berne copyright convention says that as a blog article is automatically copyrighted as soon as an author publishes in the web, with the copyright owned or held by the blog author.
Atty. Villacorta should be debarred if he continues to show his genius to the World!
This only shows that our Senators are generally unethical creatures.
We expect the good Senator Sotto to publicly apologize not only to the blogger(s), but also to the Filipino nation for his stupid transgression, and if he is man enough, to think about leaving or resigning his office.
As for Atty. Villacorta, he should know that the Philippine is a signee of the Berne copyright convention, on August 1, 1951!
Filipinos deserve leaders who they voted for, and senators deserve aides who they employ. Straighten up people! Apologize! Is that too little to ask of you?
References
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