Department of Trade and Industry is one of the Philippine government's departments to serve in the promotion of Philippine trade, businesses, investments, and pay-grades of every Filipino citizen. They are also the ones who regulate the country's trade and business activities. If you're so familiar with business advertisements and promos that you can see on TV and prints, you might have noticed the DTI permits along with it - which is usually announced in the ads and promos too. Why do entrepreneurs who conduct promos are required to have DTI permits? Of course, DTI will always see to it the promos and contests are fair. Thus, you will have to apply for an accreditation if you are to conduct a sales promotion in your business. The recent discussion about the implementation of DTI permits on blog contests caused a lot of noise over the web. DTI states that if there's a product purchase, broad consumer participation, promo period, use of tri-media, and a promise of gain, the promotion activity requires a permit. For bloggers, this is simply a matter of common sense and there is really NO NEED for them to require permits.
Is this an act of resourceFOOLness in the part our government agencies?
- BIR once asked pedicab (padyak) drivers to pay taxes (it's really funny of them trying to target small-scale profit earners rather than monstrous tax evasion of business elites.
- SLEX and NLEX toll free increases
- And many more
This is really something that says - the government needs more money and they will hunt down every people who earn profit whether it's off-line or online who don't want to share the cut. Seriously, if they will continue to implement this kind of rule, the results are rather insignificant. In fact, the rule on DTI permits doesn't apply on bloggers who just want to promote their blogs, not products. If you have some time to spend on DTI's senseless preposition, you'll find out that most of the things stated don’t rule over blog contests.
One thing is for sure, we need a reliable cyber law that can rule over anything done online. I believe that bloggers are intelligent creatures and will always find a way to straighten up DTI's unbelievable act. Let's just hope that legislators create something that'll be of use by the modern Filipino.
