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The Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature is the premier lierary tilt in the Philippines. It started in 1950 and has flourished to this day. Its annual deadline is the last day of Apr.
Just recently, the Carlos Palanca Foundation amended the rules for the literary tilt.
The amendment essentially states that the foundation is to be given the copyright and intellectual property rights of not just a writer’s winning entry for 2015 but also their previous winning entries. (Click this link to check out the said rules.)
Palanca winner Alma Anonas-Carpio has written an open letter to the foundation about the matter. She has given us permission to reporst her entire letter, which she first posted on her Facebook page. Understandably, other writers share her concerns.
OPEN LETTER ON THE NEW PALANCA RULES
Dear Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Literary Awards Foundation,
First of all, I love you. You gave me the first ever (and only) literary prize I have ever had. You gave me my very first opportunity to judge in a literary contest. My street cred as a writer is due, in a large part, to the breaks you gave me. Beyond that, you gave me damn good copy over the years, making my job as a journalist a pleasure every September. You have created a wondrous library one could get lost in for weeks only to emerge refreshed yet wanting more works by local authors.
You have kept the lamp burning bright for me, for all those whom you have given both opportunity and honor. You have given generations of young literary bucks so much and they have grown, and our patrimony of letters with it—in English, in Filipino, in Iluko and Cebuano and Hiligaynon. You have kept these languages alive in the efforts of the writers whom you have encouraged to use their mother tongues.
Yes, I am thankful. This gratitude will go on all my life and it is gratitude that, I am sure, resonates in the lives of every single writer whose life and work you have touched.
So let me take this confidence, this strength you have given me to say what I feel needs to be said. Because so much of what I do as the Associate Editor and as the Literary Editor of the Philippines Graphic magazine was learned from you.
One of my interns asked me for the rules to this iteration of the Palanca Awards and I shared the univeral resource locator (URL) for your submission rules with her. Curious, I read the rules, thinking that I may as well refresh my memory should my intern need a more detailed explanation.
What I read truly bothered me as a writer. It bothered me as an editor who must mind copyright. It disturbed my peace even as I slipped into my me-time, reminiscing over the wonderful things you have done for Filipino writers over the last six and a half decades.
I re-read the addition to your rules that bothered me thrice, trying to find something to tell me that I was wrong in thinking that your new rules would violate the copyrights of the writers who submitted and still intend to submit work to your contest.
Hard as I tried, I could not.
21. In submitting the Work(s) the contestant and parent/guardian (if applicable) (the “Contestant”) accepts and agrees to the rules of the contest (the “Rules”). In the case of a winning Work or Works, the Contestant further grants and assigns to the Sponsor the concurrent and non-exclusive right to exercise the full copyright and all other intellectual property rights over such Work(s), as well as all intellectual property rights over the Contestant’s previous Palanca Award prize–winning work(s) if any, (collectively, the “Work(s)”), and waives all moral rights over all his or her Palanca Award prize-winning Work(s) in favor of the Sponsor.
The words “waives all moral rights over his or her Palanca Award prize winning Work(s) in favor of the Sponsor,” raised the first red flag. It also puts me in a most uncertain place with regard to any past winning works that are already in your repository by any author attempting another Palanca win. Would this mean that the new rules are retroactive and will cover past entries? If so, then I am even more disturbed by this.
This grant, assignment, and waiver of rights (the “Sponsor’s Rights”), may be exercised by the Sponsor to the extent permitted under existing laws applicable at the time of exercise. The Sponsor’s Rights shall extend to all forms of storage, transmission, dissemination, and communication, presently existing or subsequently created. To the extent permitted by law, the Sponsor’s Rights shall be worldwide, continuous, and may be exercised by the Sponsor for the maximum time allowed by applicable law. In furtherance of education the Sponsor reserves the right to donate copies of individual winning Works or compilations of Winning Work(s) to public and private educational institutions and public libraries.
Then you went on to say, essentially, (or so I comprehend) that, by entering the contest, the author gives you blanket permission to continuously store, transmit, disseminate and share the author’s work, as well as donate the same to educational institutions and public libraries. But you put no other delimitations on this clause. The long and short of it, as I understand, is that you may opt to publish and sell an author’s work as e-book or paper tome without seeking any written consent besides the author’s agreement (by entering the contest) to profit commercially off their works.
To promote Philippine Literature in the modern world of information technology, the Sponsor intends to make the winning entries accessible through the Internet or other electronic media, to serve as a literary archive of the contest. The website or other media to be established for this purpose are intended to be a repository of the award-winning Works, recording the history of the development of Philippine literature over the years through the Palanca Awards. In making the Work(s) thus available to the public, the Sponsor intends purely to promote literary appreciation for and public awareness of such Work(s), and not to commercially exploit the same. Contestants must indicate on the Official Entry Form whether they agree to have their Work(s) posted on the CPMA website and made available for downloading by the public for free in the event that a prize is awarded for the entry; in the absence of any indication in the entry form, it is presumed that the author has agreed to such inclusion of the Work. To encourage use for educational purposes, winning Work(s) shall be posted on the website in their entirety. Should any winning author subsequently instruct the Sponsor in writing to include or remove the Work(s) from the Internet archive, such instruction will be honored and the Work shall be included or removed from the Internet archive within a reasonable time from Sponsor’s receipt of the author’s written instruction. The exclusion of any winning Work or Works from the website shall not constitute a waiver of any of the Sponsor’s Rights.
The prize money which may be awarded to the Contestant for the Work(s) shall constitute full payment for the Sponsor’s Rights, and shall be in lieu of any royalties or other compensation to the Contestant.”
While you may intend “purely to promote literary appreciation for and public awareness of such Work(s), and not to commercially exploit the same,” the earlier clauses are written in such a way as to enable you, as Sponsor, to change your mind without legal impediment to doing the same.This leaves authors who submit literary entries to your much esteemed institution vulnerable to infringement of their copyright. You may not intend this to be so, but that is what it could very well become, if I read your rules right.
You see, should you choose to go the route of commercially publishing works that have won prizes in your much esteemed awards, then the winners whom you have nurtured and honored would be, by their agreement with your new rules, unable to stop you from competing with them in the marketplace of books and e-books.
This may reduce the attractiveness of Palanca prize-winning manuscripts to commercial publishers who will have to put price tags on their products where you have the advantage of charging less for the same work sold commercially, either as e-book or as hardcover or paperback. This may severely impact what small opportunities there are for our writers to earn from their own work.
So I read your new rules a fourth time, beside a copy of Republic Act 8293, which contains the Copyright Law. Below are the salient points of that code that I wish to underscore.
Section178.1: “in the case of original literary and artistic works, copyright shall belong to the author of the work;
178.4. In the case of a work commissioned by a person other than an employer of the author and who pays for it and thework is made in pursuance of the commission, the person who so commissioned the work shall have ownership of the work, but the copyright thereto shall remain with the creator, unless there is a written stipulation to the contrary;
So, the author’s right to retain copyright ownership of a literary work is upheld by law. Part of that right is the right to seek publication for commercial uses or to refuse the publication of the same, or to grant written permission for another party to publish his or her work. We authors rarely seek income from our brainchildren, and when we do, we don’t really expect much. But we do wish to retain ownership and at least some control over the publication of the same and how. It is, truly, all we have.
Section 180. Rights of Assignee. – 180.1. The copyright may be assigned in whole or in part. Within the scope of the assignment, the assignee is entitled to all the rights and remedies which the assignor had with respect to the copyright.
180.2. The copyright is not deemed assigned inter vivos in whole or in part unless there is a written indication of such intention.
But the law, apparently, allows an author to give “written indication” assigning copyright of a given literary work. So here is where your rules play into that, where the risk to the author lies.
If an author wishes to join this year’s Palanca Awards, then s/he must abide by your contest rules. These rules give you, as Sponsor, the right to disseminate the author’s work without need to seek further written permission than that granted by the waiver the author signs in the process of entering the contest. These same rules of yours seem to have the ability to go retroactive, possibly covering earlier works that may have been entered into and awarded prizes in earlier Palanca Awards. Please tell me it is not so.
SEC. 185. Fair Use of a Copyrighted Work. – 185.1. The fair use of a copyrighted work for criticism, comment, newsreporting, teaching including multiple copies for classroom use, scholarship, research, and similar purposes is not an infringement of copyright.
Your rules, if they follow your stated intent, fall under the fair use policy of the Copyright Law. As authors, we are more than happy to share our work with schools and for the purposes under the fair use policy of the Intellectual Property Code (IPC). But intent and stated delimitation are two different things, something your rules seem to have some conflict over.
But the IPC is clear:
Section 187.2 (e) Any work in cases where reproduction would unreasonably conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or would otherwise unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author. (n)
This is where I must ask you to reconsider your new rules, to read them over and refine them. In my heart of hearts I feel that you would never abuse the authors whose cause you have pushed forward through dark years and light—you have soldiered on for too long, grown too strong in your role as a champion of this country’s writers, to change your advocacy now—or at least that is what I tell myself.
Yet the wording of your rules make them open to such abuse and a clarification of them—perhaps editing to tighten what protection you offer in the rules for every author who joins your most esteemed contest—would be beneficial to all concerned.
Would you be so kind as to clarify these new rules, that our writers and their copyrights may be kept safe? Can we clear the air on this, once and for all?
Thank you, ever so much. I am sure that my faith in your good intents and goodwill is well-placed. Yes, I still love you and I always will.
Alma Anonas-Carpio
Writer
