hazmapping.com: Begin a Campaign today in your own way with friends to pressure government to modernize PHIVOLCS

We fully sympathize with the people of Bohol, Cebu, Leyte, Samar, among many other places that were affected by the recent Killer Earthquake. We are hereby posting as a courtesy this call by the Disaster, Hazards Mapping Program Group (Hazmapping)

Article Source: http://www.hazmapping.com

From over 40 casualties, the death toll has risen to nearly 100 in the Carmen, Bohol Province-Cebu City earthquake. At that figure, the Carmen-Cebu tremor can qualify as a Killer Quake. Cebu and nearby areas has to be declared to be in a state of calamity. There are limited manuevers that aircraft can make at the Cebu airport due to the cracking and opening up of the airport's runways.

The six million dollar question is: how many more incidents like those in Carmen, Bohol and Cebu City and the other ones in Leyte, Samar will we be expecting?

Were the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) prepared adequately enough with equipment to monitor ground movement, tectonic plate disturbance, the nearly 100 deaths could have been avoided. 27 Billion Philippine Pesos is earmarked for pork barrel in the 2014 General Appropriations Act out of a total expenditure program of 2.26 Trillion Philippine Pesos. Would it be difficult to allocate even half of that pork barrel budget for emergency preparedness, disaster risk reduction, equipment upgrade?

Past Warnings of Big Disaster

This site has been warning the public for more than four years since the time of the former President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Due to the total torpedoing of the private sector (Corinthian Gardens, Forbes Park, Dasmarinas Village, the owners of high rise condominiums at the left side of EDSA southbound, among others), of the program for predicting highly lethal effects of a major tremor in Metro Manila and the replication of this effort in many urban areas in the country by the same sector in collusion with some corrupt officials in the government, a large disaster and environmental hazards summit was proposed to be supported by the Philippine Government and the United Nations, among other institutions from many other sectors - including the non-profit (minus the Napoles et al NGOs).

Wanting responses

It is reiterated that in the time of Mrs. Arroyo, only the then Administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA), Ms. Elaine Bautista, now Mrs. Horn, had the small effort to make an email message to the proponents of the 2010 Disaster and Environmental Hazards Mapping Summit. And that was only because the United Nations Environment Programm (UNEP)  told the former Ms. Bautista to get in touch with HMES 2010 organizing group. At the time, concurrent to her post in MARINA, Ms. Bautista was considered a friend of UNEP and a significant point person for the Philippine Government in relation to selected UNEP concerns - particularly about emergency and assistance.

When Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd became President, the organizing group wrote to Ms. Corazon Juliano Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Gen. Voltaire Tuvera Gazmin. Ms. Soliman did not respond. It was noticed however that several days later, Gen. Gazmin, the Secretary of the Department of National Defense gave an interview to national media.

In that interview, when Gazmin was asked about what the people should do when a disaster strikes, he replied: "Run for your lives."

Carrying the barest minimum luggage in their bodies, the poor, helpless people in above photos must have taken advice similar to that of Gen. Voltaire Gazmin's to leave and forget belongings elsewhere and to "run for your lives."

It will appear that the kind of response the government has given is exceedingly wanting in substance. It is hoped however that as a grandfather and parent, Gazmin to no fault of his own was merely showing his personal concern for the safety of the life of the average citizen. He was probably very well-meaning and was admonishing the people not to bring their television sets, beds, furniture, cash safety vaults, washing machines, cabinets, sofa, stoves with their fuel gas tanks, desk-stand-ceiling fans, air conditioners, desktop computers and refrigerators outside of their homes and instead to proceed to a more safe location and be saved in time of major catastrophe.

The head of the Philvolcs, Dr. Renato Solidum absolutely cannot be faulted and is blameless. For decades, had been ready to accept the support for equipment upgrade and modernization. Despite the billions of funds allocated to the departments of the government, the great oversight of perpetually forgetting to take care of the Philvolcs modernization programme has consistently been committed by this government.

Despite the billions lost for the personal enrichment of selected persons in our public sector and their intimate partners in very enterprising undertakings in the private sector, no one has shown keen interest in allowing the Philvolcs to finally get hold of the adequate funding for acquisition of hardware and software that will highly increase its forecasting accuracy and its earthquake trending studies and research on the major faults all over the country. Click here for more.

Excerpts: Philippine IPR Laws

Excerpts of Philippines Copyright Law from Wikipedia

Fair use

Section 185 of the Intellectual Property Code provides for fair use of copyrighted material. The criteria for fair use is almost identical to the fair use doctrine in United States copyright law, with the exception that even unpublished works qualify as fair use under Philippine copyright law.
Moral rights

Moral rights, which can be exercised by any copyright holders (individuals, corporations, etc.), are enshrined in Chapter 10 of the Intellectual Property Code. However, Section 193 of the code (which is also in Chapter 10), which also outlines a copyright holder's moral rights, makes these rights independent of economic rights outlined in Section 177 of the code.
Under Philippine copyright law, moral rights are relatively expansive on the behalf of the copyright holder, which are listed below:

Attribution

The right to be prominently displayed as the creator of the copyrighted material, in any form practical to the work
The right to change or even withhold the work from circulation

Integrity of ownership

The right to object to any alteration detrimental to the name of the creator of the material

The right to restraining the use of the creator's name in a work not of his making

Copyright holders are not allowed to be forced to create or publish his or her works already published, as that could be classified as a breach of contract. However, the copyright holder could also be held liable for breach of contract.

The Intellectual Property Code also permits the waiver of moral rights in most cases, but does not allow it if the following situations occur:

If the creator's name will be used to damage the reputation of another person

If the creator's name will be used to give credit to something he or she did not make

Moral rights are automatically waived in collective works unless the copyright holders expressly reserve their moral rights. Also, if no objections have been made during the time a copyright holder waives his or her moral rights or even if moral rights were waived unconditionally, works altered or even destroyed would not constitute as a violation of moral rights.

In the Philippines, the term of moral rights, unless they were waived, is the same as the term of copyright of a literary work (lifetime plus 50 years). Violation of moral rights may also be contested as a violation of the Civil Code. Any damages collected under the Civil Code shall be given to the copyright holder, or if the holder is already dead, be put in a trust account to be given to the copyright holder's heirs. If the heirs defaulted, the damages go to the government.

Ownership of copyright

As the country is a party to the Berne Convention, Philippine copyright law expressly gives copyright ownership to the copyright holder automatically for creative works which fit in one of the categories.

Government copyright

Government copyright under Philippine copyright law is established in Section 176 and its subsections. That section specifies that no copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the Philippines. However, it also specifies that prior approval of the government agency or office wherein the work is created is necessary for exploitation of government works for profit.[1]

There are exceptions to the rule: the author of any public speaking works may have the works compiled, published, and copyrighted, and the government is permitted to receive and hold copyrights it received as a gift or assigned. However, such copyrights may not be shortened or annulled without prior consent of the copyright holder.

Challenge to the World International Property Office

Big business fights small countries that are infringing on their intellectual property.

The United Nations IPR arm, World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) says there is a need to balance social benefit.

“The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a United Nations body, has pointed out the need for a second interpretation of global intellectual property law, one that balances social benefit with the need to protect investment.

“This balancing could help reconcile the differences between developing nations such as India, and the concerns of multi-national companies and developed nations, according to Francis Gurry, Director-General of the WIPO.

“I think there are two definitions of intellectual property. One has been defined by the need to innovate, and, therefore, the need to protect investment. The second way is that it should not solely be about protecting the interests of investment, but instead should be about balancing social benefit with the whole mix...”

In the midst of these debates, where does the UN IPR organization stand on big business stealing the copyright of small people and small business?

Everywhere around the world, prosecution and litigation of IPR law violations is beset by lack of probabilities for winning a case against infringement if one is not as big as Apple, Mitsubishi, Microsoft or any other private enterprise giant.

Furthermore, to fight an opponent that infringed your ownership rights to your intellectual property alone will take an agonizing climb onto the peak of a mountain that could endanger your life if the enemy has scaled the height ahead and will merely push you to your death with the pointing of a finger at your forehead.

There is a need for policy regime change around the world particularly in making judiciary and prosecution systems more supportive of the victims of IPR infringements.

This should be the real challenge of the UN's WIPO now and in the future, knowing as it fully well does that the problem has been a pestering thorn that needs to be removed as soon as possible. If the problem persists even with the UN knowing, then the WIPO is a useless white elephant and cannot truly justify its existence.

Business Group announcement

A business organization internet site will publish an open letter, addressed to the top-ranked Asia billionaire owner of a huge retail-banking-real estate-gambling conglomerate with regard to illegal business practices without due regard to the parties that are robbed of the opportunity to profit from their proprietary interests.

This letter will be emailed to various public sector agencies concerned with providing legal remedies and sanctions on individuals and groups committing illegal acts similar to those perpetrated by the retail-banking-real estate-gambling conglomerate in the Philippines.