BY JULLIE Y. DAZA
Calm down, everybody. Not only does MTRCB not have the ability to “regulate” Netflix, it doesn’t have the technology. (If it had, could it share its chops with DepEd, with teachers and students who are struggling to cast the other net first, Internet?)
The movie and television review board’s lawyer may be ignorant of how video on demand works; he should have heard what his chairman told media, that regulation will be merely in the form of Netflix being registered as a business operating in the Philippines. Chairman Rachel Arenas has assured all couch potatoes quarantined in these binge-watching times that the intention was not to censor content. What a far cry from Atty. Jonathan Presquito’s kill-joy attempt to justify the “necessity for us to proceed with regulation, especially during the lockdown.”
Anyone who has felt the effects of the ABS-CBN shutdown has every right to fear another big chill coming. Even if Netflix is not a free provider, it enjoys a faithful 24/7 audience of close to a million in the Philippines. Overall and ever since the pandemic turned the world upside-down, Netflix has increased its subscribers base, casting a wider net to catch and keep its 192 million fans entertained. As for content, the legend is that it has enough movies, serials, documentaries, fiction and nonfiction, and faction (fiction disguised as nonfiction, nonfiction imagined as fiction), etc. to last 300 human lifetimes. How do you monitor, pre- and post-, that kind of streaming?
Don’t worry, Attorney, those shows have been rated (by Netflix) for viewership according to age. See the small print on the top le corner of your screen.
Not unreasonably, senators and congressmen were first to raise a howl over the MTRCB proposal. (It was MTRCB that brought the matter of such a “need” to the attention of the Senate.) From the perspective of reviewers, Netflix would have been an exciting new source of work for them, now that there are no new TV shows and movies to classify. No one is even talking about the Metro Manila Film Festival due in December. Some Filipino movies are showing on Netflix; they have been rated, just like those hugely popular Korean dramas.
Which is not to stop parents from watching what their children are watching.
