The copyright crisis behind O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat on TikTok

By Noel Galon de Leon

It almost feels as though our copyright laws have lost their teeth. Despite the countless public lectures, seminars, workshops, and awareness campaigns devoted to intellectual property, the violations seem only to multiply. Have we truly succeeded in reaching the public, or have we merely been speaking to ourselves while the very people we hope to educate continue to misunderstand what copyright actually means?

This question has been haunting me ever since I encountered discussions surrounding O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat, the celebrated Kinaray-a literary work of Russel O. Tordesillas, circulating on TikTok through AI-generated storytelling.

Whether a particular upload has been authorized or not ultimately depends on the permission granted by the copyright holder. Yet regardless of the specific circumstances of any individual video, the larger controversy exposes a cultural problem that extends far beyond one literary work, one content creator, or even one social media platform. It reveals an increasingly normalized belief that whatever can be digitized, animated, narrated, or processed by artificial intelligence has somehow become public property. This misconception is perhaps one of the most troubling consequences of our digital culture. The speed of technological innovation has far outpaced our understanding of the ethical and legal responsibilities that accompany it.

Artificial intelligence has undoubtedly transformed creative production. Within minutes, sophisticated software can generate illustrations, synthetic voices, cinematic animations, and compelling visual narratives that would once have required an entire production team. These technological advances are remarkable, and they deserve recognition for expanding creative possibilities. Yet somewhere between innovation and convenience, many have begun to assume that technology itself grants permission. It does not. The existence of powerful AI tools does not diminish copyright protection. The ability to reproduce, summarize, dramatize, or visually reinterpret a literary work does not automatically confer the right to do so. Digital capability should never be mistaken for legal entitlement.

The debate surrounding O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat therefore presents an opportunity to discuss a much larger issue confronting Philippine literature in the age of artificial intelligence. We are no longer merely asking whether AI can tell stories. We already know that it can. The more urgent question is whether we remain capable of recognizing the intellectual labor behind those stories. Every novel, every poem, every play, and every literary masterpiece represents years—sometimes decades—of imagination, discipline, revision, and sacrifice. Literature is not produced by algorithms. It is produced by writers whose lives become inseparable from the works they create. When those works are transformed into digital content without sufficient regard for the rights attached to them, the consequences extend beyond legal technicalities. They reshape our collective understanding of authorship itself.

This is precisely why O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat deserves far greater respect than simply becoming another viral narrative circulating through endless streams of algorithmically generated content. Russel O. Tordesillas occupies an important place in the literary history of Western Visayas, and O’Lai Ra stands among the significant achievements of Kinaray-a literature. Rooted in indigenous mythology and the enduring traditions surrounding the tamawo, the novel demonstrates the extraordinary capacity of regional languages to produce sophisticated literary narratives equal to any written in more dominant languages. It bridges oral tradition and written literature, preserving local cosmologies while transforming them into a complex literary imagination. To encounter O’Lai Ra merely as material for short-form entertainment is to risk overlooking the cultural, historical, and artistic significance embedded within its pages.

Perhaps this is the greatest irony of our digital moment. Regional literature has spent generations struggling to be seen, read, studied, and recognized within the national literary canon. Writers in Kinaray-a, Hiligaynon, Cebuano, Waray, and many other Philippine languages have long confronted institutional neglect, limited publication opportunities, and inadequate national attention. Today, digital platforms finally offer these works unprecedented visibility. Yet visibility alone is not preservation. Recognition alone is not respect. When literary works become infinitely shareable without corresponding recognition of the rights that protect them, digital visibility can easily become another form of cultural extraction. The literature circulates widely while its creators, heirs, and intellectual ownership gradually disappear from public consciousness.

This is not merely a legal concern. It is a cultural one. The way we treat our literary heritage reflects the kind of society we are becoming. Do we value literature only as content that can generate views, likes, and followers? Or do we continue to recognize it as intellectual labor deserving of both admiration and protection? The answer will determine not only the future of copyright but also the future of Philippine literature itself. If we continue to confuse accessibility with ownership and technological innovation with unrestricted freedom, we risk creating a culture in which the writer becomes invisible while the content creator becomes the celebrated author of someone else’s imagination.

The tragedy of social media is that it rewards immediacy over reflection. A creator may spend only a few hours producing an AI-generated video, complete with dramatic narration, cinematic visuals, and emotionally compelling music, while the novelist may have devoted years to imagining the world, developing the characters, refining the language, and constructing the narrative that made such a video possible in the first place. The audience applauds the adaptation, shares it with friends, and praises the apparent creativity of the uploader. Yet remarkably few people stop to ask the most important question: Who wrote the original story? Was permission obtained? Is the work still protected by copyright? In the economy of social media, originality is too often overshadowed by visibility. The creator who uploads the content becomes more recognizable than the writer who created the intellectual foundation upon which that content depends. Authorship slowly disappears behind algorithms, engagement statistics, and the relentless pursuit of virality.

This phenomenon reveals a profound misunderstanding of what copyright is meant to protect. Copyright is not simply about preventing piracy or securing financial compensation. It is society’s recognition that intellectual labor deserves legal and moral protection. It acknowledges that creative works are not accidents but the products of sustained imagination, discipline, scholarship, and artistic commitment. Every literary work embodies years of reading, thinking, writing, revising, and enduring rejection before reaching its audience. To appropriate that labor without authorization is not merely a technical legal issue. It raises fundamental questions about respect for creativity itself. A culture that fails to recognize intellectual labor ultimately diminishes the value of literature.

One of the most persistent misconceptions surrounding artificial intelligence is the belief that AI somehow exists outside the framework of copyright law. Many people now ask whether the use of AI automatically makes a video legal. The answer is unequivocally no. Artificial intelligence, by itself, is not a copyright violation. AI is simply another creative instrument, much like a camera, a paintbrush, a microphone, or editing software. It possesses no independent legal authority to erase the rights attached to copyrighted works. The legal issue arises not from the technology itself but from the manner in which it is employed.

If AI is used to transform a copyrighted literary work into the principal content of a video, if it substantially reproduces or retells the protected narrative, if it recreates important scenes or expressive elements without authorization, or if it generates an audiovisual adaptation of the work without the consent of the copyright holder, then the issue is no longer about artificial intelligence. It becomes a question of copyright. Likewise, if such an adaptation is uploaded to attract views, followers, engagement, or advertising revenue while relying upon another person’s protected literary work without permission, legitimate legal concerns inevitably arise. AI changes the method of production, but it does not extinguish authorship. Technology may accelerate creativity, but it cannot eliminate the rights of those whose creativity made the work possible.

This distinction is precisely what our public discourse continues to overlook. We enthusiastically celebrate prompt engineering, generative media, synthetic voices, and machine-assisted creativity while devoting comparatively little attention to copyright literacy. Universities organize seminars on artificial intelligence. Government agencies promote digital innovation. Creative industries encourage experimentation with emerging technologies. Yet discussions of intellectual property frequently occupy only a small portion of these conversations, if they appear at all. As a consequence, many individuals learn how to generate content long before they learn how to determine whether they possess the legal authority to use the material from which that content is derived.

Another misconception deserves to be challenged with equal force: the belief that simply acknowledging the original author is sufficient. Across social media platforms, phrases such as “No copyright infringement intended,” “Credits to the author,” or “All rights belong to the owner” have become almost ritualistic disclaimers. They create the illusion of legal compliance while offering little actual legal protection. Attribution is ethically important because it recognizes authorship, but attribution alone does not replace permission when permission is legally required. Copyright protects far more than the author’s name. It grants exclusive rights over reproduction, adaptation, distribution, public performance, and communication of the work to the public, subject only to limited statutory exceptions. A caption expressing gratitude cannot substitute for authorization from the copyright holder.

Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of digital culture is that it encourages us to confuse accessibility with ownership. Because information appears instantly on our screens, we begin to assume that it belongs to everyone. Because a novel can be downloaded, quoted, summarized, narrated, or transformed into AI-generated visuals within minutes, we mistakenly believe that its legal protections have somehow weakened. They have not. Copyright does not disappear simply because technology makes copying easier. On the contrary, the ease with which digital technologies reproduce creative works makes respect for intellectual property even more essential than before. The more powerful our tools become, the greater our responsibility to use them ethically.

What concerns me most is not the existence of AI but the gradual normalization of intellectual entitlement. Increasingly, creators appear to ask not whether they should use another person’s work but whether they can. The distinction is profound. Technological capability should never replace ethical judgment. Our fascination with innovation has produced a generation that can generate stunning visual narratives within minutes yet sometimes hesitates to spend a few moments asking whether permission is necessary. That imbalance reveals not merely a legal deficiency but a cultural one. We have become remarkably sophisticated in developing machines while remaining surprisingly underdeveloped in cultivating respect for creative labor.

The implications of this issue become even more significant when the work in question belongs to regional literature. For generations, Philippine literary history has been dominated by works produced in Manila or written in English and Filipino, while remarkable literary traditions in Kinaray-a, Hiligaynon, Cebuano, Waray, Kapampangan, Bikol, and many other Philippine languages have remained at the margins of national consciousness. Writers from the regions have struggled against limited publication opportunities, inadequate institutional support, and a literary market that frequently measures value according to commercial visibility rather than cultural significance. Every regional masterpiece that survives does so because generations of writers, scholars, translators, educators, and readers have fought to preserve it. O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat belongs to this enduring tradition. It is not merely a novel; it is part of the intellectual and cultural memory of Western Visayas.

Ironically, the digital revolution has created a new paradox. Regional literature now enjoys unprecedented visibility through social media platforms that can introduce local works to audiences far beyond their original linguistic communities. Yet visibility without ethical responsibility can easily become another form of cultural extraction. Stories travel farther than the names of their authors. Literary works accumulate millions of views while the people who created them become increasingly invisible. The algorithm celebrates circulation but rarely acknowledges intellectual ownership. In this new digital economy, literature risks becoming detached from the very writers who gave it life. We congratulate ourselves for making regional literature “accessible,” yet accessibility means very little if it comes at the expense of the legal and moral rights of those who produced it.

This is precisely why discussions of copyright should never be dismissed as mere legal technicalities. Copyright is a cultural institution. It affirms that artistic creation possesses value beyond entertainment. It recognizes that literature constitutes intellectual labor deserving of protection in the same way that physical labor deserves compensation. Every novel carries not only economic value but also the dignity of authorship. To disregard copyright is therefore not simply to ignore a statute; it is to diminish the social value of writing itself. When society begins treating literature as freely available digital material simply because technology allows effortless reproduction, it gradually erodes public respect for writers and for the creative process upon which culture depends.

If an AI-generated adaptation of O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat has been created and publicly distributed without the authorization of the copyright holder, then legitimate legal questions naturally arise. The issue would not be the artificial intelligence itself but the possible unauthorized reproduction, adaptation, or communication of a protected literary work to the public. These questions deserve careful legal examination rather than emotional reaction. They also remind us that technological innovation should never exempt anyone from existing intellectual property laws. Copyright continues to apply regardless of whether the work is copied by hand, photographed, filmed, digitally edited, or transformed through artificial intelligence.

If the copyright remains with the family or lawful estate of Russel O. Tordesillas, they possess several legitimate avenues for protecting both the author’s literary legacy and their legal rights. They may first request that the uploader voluntarily remove the material while the issue is clarified. If the content remains online, they may file a copyright infringement complaint with TikTok and request that the platform remove the allegedly infringing material pursuant to its intellectual property policies. They may also issue a formal cease and desist letter demanding that unauthorized reproductions, adaptations, or public dissemination immediately stop. Should informal measures prove unsuccessful, they may consider pursuing the appropriate civil or criminal remedies available under the Philippine Intellectual Property Code, provided that the facts support such action. These legal remedies should not be interpreted as acts of censorship. Rather, they represent society’s recognition that intellectual creations deserve meaningful legal protection.

Our public conversations often portray copyright enforcement as hostility toward creativity. Nothing could be more misleading. Copyright has never existed to discourage artistic expression. On the contrary, it exists because society believes that artists deserve sufficient protection to continue creating. Without meaningful copyright protection, writers lose confidence that their intellectual labor will be respected. When authors begin to fear that their works can be freely appropriated, transformed, and monetized by others without consent, the incentive to produce ambitious literary works inevitably weakens. Protecting copyright therefore protects the future of literature itself.

Perhaps the greatest challenge before us is not technological but educational. We have invested considerable effort in teaching people how to use artificial intelligence, yet we have devoted far less attention to teaching them when they should not use it. Digital literacy without copyright literacy remains incomplete. Innovation without ethics remains dangerous. Artificial intelligence has given us extraordinary creative power, but that power demands an equally extraordinary commitment to responsibility. Unless we cultivate that sense of responsibility, we risk producing a generation capable of creating increasingly sophisticated content while becoming progressively detached from the ethical principles that sustain artistic culture.

None of this should be mistaken for an argument against artificial intelligence itself. AI possesses extraordinary potential to expand access to knowledge, preserve endangered languages, enrich classroom instruction, assist scholarly research, improve translation, and inspire entirely new forms of artistic expression. It may even become one of the most important tools for introducing younger generations to Philippine literature. Imagine regional novels translated into multiple languages, historical narratives visualized for educational purposes, or forgotten literary masterpieces rediscovered by audiences across the world through responsible digital innovation. These are possibilities worth celebrating. The future of literature should not fear artificial intelligence. It should embrace it—but only within an ethical framework that recognizes the indispensable role of consent, attribution, and intellectual property.

The conversation surrounding O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat therefore represents something much larger than a debate over a single TikTok upload. It compels us to examine the values we bring into an increasingly algorithmic culture. If a copyrighted literary work is substantially reproduced, adapted, dramatized, or publicly communicated without the authorization of its copyright holder, there are legitimate legal grounds to question that use. The most responsible path remains remarkably simple: seek permission before adapting another person’s literary work, whether the adaptation is produced through traditional filmmaking, digital editing, or artificial intelligence. Respect should always precede reproduction. Consent should always precede publication.

What disappoints me most is that we continue speaking about preserving Philippine cultural heritage while often neglecting the very legal and ethical principles that make such preservation meaningful. Every year, government agencies, universities, museums, libraries, and cultural organizations invest significant resources in documenting, archiving, promoting, and celebrating regional literature. Conferences are organized. Public lectures are delivered. Literary festivals are held. Grants are awarded. Books are digitized. Yet these admirable efforts lose much of their significance if the public simultaneously develops the habit of treating literary works as unrestricted digital resources. Preservation is not achieved simply by making literature visible. Preservation also requires respecting the rights attached to literary creation.

This contradiction reveals a deeper cultural problem. We have become remarkably proficient at celebrating writers after they have entered history while remaining surprisingly indifferent to protecting their works in the present. We praise our literary pioneers during commemorative events, quote them in academic conferences, and invoke their names whenever we speak about cultural identity. Yet when their works begin circulating online, many people no longer ask who owns the rights, who manages the estate, or whether permission has been secured. We honor authors symbolically while neglecting the practical responsibilities that genuine respect requires. Our admiration has become ceremonial rather than ethical.

The digital age has also transformed our understanding of creativity itself. Increasingly, originality is measured not by the creation of new ideas but by the ability to repackage existing ones into more shareable formats. Algorithms reward speed, frequency, and engagement. They rarely reward patience, careful scholarship, or sustained literary craftsmanship. Consequently, we have begun celebrating those who remix culture more enthusiastically than those who produce it. The writer, once regarded as the originator of imagination, risks becoming invisible beneath layers of adaptation, automation, and content production. That inversion should concern anyone who cares about the future of literature.

The controversy surrounding O’Lai Ra: Prinsesa kang Dagat forces us to confront a question that extends far beyond copyright law. It asks whether we still understand what it means to value intellectual labor. Behind every enduring literary work stands years of research, countless revisions, emotional sacrifice, and an unwavering commitment to language and storytelling. Those investments cannot be measured merely by the number of views generated on a social media platform. They deserve recognition not only through admiration but also through legal protection and ethical responsibility.

Artificial intelligence will continue to evolve. Social media platforms will become even more influential. Digital storytelling will grow increasingly sophisticated. None of these developments are inherently threatening. The true danger lies elsewhere. It lies in allowing technological convenience to erode our respect for authorship. It lies in confusing innovation with entitlement, accessibility with ownership, and virality with cultural preservation. The future of literature will not be determined by how advanced our machines become. It will be determined by whether we remain capable of remembering the human beings whose imagination gave those machines something worth reproducing.

Perhaps, then, the real question is no longer whether AI can tell our stories. We already know that it can. The more urgent question is whether we possess the wisdom, humility, and cultural maturity to recognize that every story belongs first to the mind that imagined it. Until we learn to distinguish technological capability from ethical responsibility, our greatest innovation may also become our greatest act of cultural forgetfulness. And if that happens, the gravest copyright violation will not simply occur on a TikTok screen. It will occur within our collective understanding of what it truly means to honor literature, protect its creators, and safeguard the cultural memory of a nation.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He is also the secretary of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.