OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of Romar Media Canada, The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail.com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .
Our latest as of Friday, January 17, 2025
~ A video thief found an easy way to boost her profile on YouTube by stealing my video coverage of the protest rally against the rapists of movie starlet Pepsi Paloma who performed in Toronto in April 2014. It's an unpleasant discovery, to say the least. The steal was no different from what Taste of Manila (ToM) festival organizers had done in 2020 when they manipulated and spliced the purloined footage with images of people who were not in the festival in the first place.
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WHO IS VIVIAN BARRERA?
Another Video Thief Exposed
Stolen video raised hundreds of views in her channel
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"You cannot steal somebody's intellectual property. Law and justice protect." - Bikram Choudhury
TORONTO - With total views as of this writing totaling 3,135,754 views, and 6.28K subscribers, it's almost a given that individuals with little or no experience in video journalism and/or online (digital) journalism would resort to stealing contents from The Filipino Web Channel (TFWC) which I founded in November 2010.
Some of these individuals are totally ignorant. Some are wishful dreamers who aspire to be journalists but are too incompetent to even qualify. Some possess the derring-do to make money from the sweat of other people. Some are simply thieves.
TFWC is one of my four flagship outlets under my eponymous social media network Romar Media Canada. The others are Currents & Breaking News (aka The Gotcha Journalist) or C&BN, Filipino Web Entertainment, and Eats & Restos channels.
C&BN had accumulated 1,793,959 views; FilWebEntertainment, 2,134,156; and E&R, 373,712. Altogether, they have combined views of 7,437,581, which I consider a feat in local digital journalism.
That kind of viewership or online exposure is impossible to attain when writing (thus, readership) for a community newspaper that purports to be the largest in Toronto.
The growing number of people who visit my channels has not escaped notice. Every now and then I get offers of partnerships with big corporations for advertising insertions. Well, thank you, but I have to discuss such proposals with YouTube.
The latest suggestion came yesterday, Jan. 16, from a world-renowned brand, whose PR manager wrote: "We love your engaging content and your amazing rapport with your viewers. It's exciting to see how much value you bring to your platform, and we'd be honored to partner with you."
Days ago while searching for more information about the lawsuit brought by one of the rapists of starlet Pepsi Paloma, I came across a video thief named Vivian Barrera who took a very big slice of what should have been my viewers to try to grow her piddling channel on YouTube.
She stole and manipulated content from my news coverage without the slightest courtesy, or giving credit to my YouTube channel as her source, or asking permission to copy it.
I would have agreed to let her if she showed some respect. But no, she even took out my introductory footage, my byline, and covered the watermark.
Now, this thief brings back again the Taste of Manila (ToM) festival organizers, notably its alleged founder, Rolly "kabise" Mangante, who are the most-visible functionaries with the audacity to steal my copyrighted intellectual property and put it up as their own.
His erstwhile friends at International Entertainment Company (IEC) like Cecile Araneta and Ramon Datol, both of whom he dumped in favor of SPARC (Society of Philippine Artists, Recreation and Community, have pointed to him as the brains behind the steal.
(Related videos:
The two business partners identified the co-conspirators of Rolly Mangante as Philip Beloso, Pepito Torralba, Jerome Peralta, Dannasol Luna and her unidentified brother. (Full story: Non-Profit Org Blamed for Video Theft Vanishes).
What they did was no different from what this Vivian Barrera did. She stole, manipulated, and uploaded my video of the protest rally against the rapists of movie starlet Pepsi Paloma at Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in April 2014.
The intro and brief background story in the first 57 minutes of my video titled "Outrage Over Rape of Pepsi Paloma Erupts in Protest at 'Eat Bulaga' in Toronto (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeH2QoGkyPQ) were removed and the edited/manipulated video was then uploaded to her channel.
My original video had only 57,752 views as of today (Jan. 17), a mere quarter of what the stolen video had amassed, which is 217,398 views. Because of that wide disparity, I had to rewrite the headline to make it more competitive with what Vivian Barrera had purloined from my own channel.
Vivian Barrera, the video thief, had only three short videos since she joined YouTube in September 2013. That shows how inept she is. She can't even provide a brief description of what her videos are about.
The three videos are inconsequential, recording only 46 views, 17views, and 9 views for each one. The fourth video on her channel is about Pepsi Paloma, which she claimed to be hers but actually stolen from my channel and had given her a big boost - 217,398 views as of yesterday.
I Google-searched her name in hopes of seeing her internet presence. There's none except for the "vivian barrera" channel. Who is Vivian Barrera? Is she a professional larcenist?
Barrera's thievery predated ToM's stealing by three years. Initially I thought that what Mangante had told his co-conspirators to do was worse. (Related video: Social Climbers in PESO Steal Street Festival Content)
Mangante had people manipulating my videos, splicing them with pictures of his wife Nieves, supporters like Cecile Araneta, and political friends like Councillor James Pasternak, MP Marco Mendicino, and others with whom he was ingratiating himself.
In both Barrera's and ToM's stealing, they're reaping the fruits of my labour. They also have committed an unlawful act. Should I hail them to court, as one lawyer-friend has suggested? Would it be worth my time to pursue them? (Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved.)