Lawmakers of the incoming Congress should provide the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) with greater police powers to prevent the collapse of the Philippine creative industry, a consumer advocacy group said in a statement.
“IPOPHL should be empowered to implement rolling site blocking to effectively purge online pirates who violate intellectual property and threaten the viability of the creative industry,” said lawyer Tim Abejo, convenor of CitizenWatch Philippines.
“In the ASEAN region, the Philippines is the only county not enforcing rolling site-blocking. We are missing the opportunity to clamp down hard on these online pirates,” he said.
Site blocking is an anti-piracy mechanism where access to a particular website is restricted. To be effective, it requires constant coordination and information sharing between government, internet service providers, and stakeholders. A rolling site blocking is a more pro-active form of site blocking.
The IPOPHL has enforcement powers in acting on complaints from IP rights owners. It has also partnered with internet service providers to improve coordination toward a streamlined and rapid blocking of pirated sites.
But its Director General, Rowel Barba, said the IPOPHL’s power to block sites does not guarantee the removal of content or sites used for piracy or for selling counterfeit goods.
There is a need for an enabling law that will institutionalize the authority of IPOPHL to block piracy sites and abolish the current protocol that its order still has to be validated by the NTC. This administrative step causes significant delay in implementing real-time site blocking.
“Criminals and infringers may just migrate to a new site, where they regain normal traffic after only a few weeks,” he said. “This is common practice among pirated networks so the job of stopping them becomes more challenging than ever.”
The solution would be to enable the agency to implement rolling site blocking, which increases the likelihood of pirates being pursued regardless of where they take the pirated content.
“Site-blocking will enable IPOPHL to craft its own guidelines on takedowns, such as having ISPs comply within hours instead of several days as the current process would take. Rolling site blocking, as opposed to simple site blocking, will be disruptive as it will provide rights owners with the swift response they need in preventing further harm to their IP rights and potential revenues,” Barba said.
He also believes this will encourage copyright holders, and even trademark owners, to be bolder in filing complaints against IP violations in the online space.
“The IPOPHL and rights owners have to act proactively and with consistency. We have to be given room to perform our mandate more effectively.”
“Online piracy does a great disservice to Filipino artists and inventors by undermining their creative potential and obstructing their ability to fully contribute to the economy. It threatens all workers in creative industries, not only for what they actually lose, but for all other opportunities they will miss in the future,” Barba said.
Creative professionals – video producers, distributors and aggregators – in the Philippines lost at least P1 billion in potential revenue in 2020, according to Media Partners Asia. Subscription video-on-demand services lost P6.3 billion in the same period.
Aside from this, online piracy elevates the risk of malware infection and compromises data privacy, with many privacy websites containing advertisements that promote pornography and encourage gambling. In fact, an AVIA Industry Report released this year revealed that Filipinos are aware of the detrimental effects of online piracy.
Half of the respondents believe it results in job loss among those working in the creative industry, 55% acknowledge that it results in people making profits from content that is not theirs, 49% believe that it increases the risk of malware infections on people’s computers and devices, and 44% say online pirates do not pay taxes and therefore all of society is being defrauded.
Despite this, according to the 2022 YouGov survey commissioned by the Coalition Against Piracy (CAP), 61% of Filipino consumers access pirated content, a marked increase from just 49% in 2020. 2020 figures also The Philippines was also found to be the third highest consumer of illegal content in the Asia-Pacific region, based on 2020 figures.
“Indeed, the consequences of piracy are far-reaching,” said Abejo. “What is even more alarming is that people seem to be aware of them, and yet the problem persists. Clearly, it is time for the government to step in.”
Rolling site blocking has benefited other countries in their own fight against online piracy. The AVIA found that over 40% of consumers in key markets across Southeast Asia have stopped or rarely access pirated content as a result of site blocking.
Site blocking has found massive success in Indonesia, leading to a 55% reduction in consumers accessing piracy services – from 63% in 2019 to 28% in 2020. In Malaysia, the reduction was even greater at 64%. Key to the decline in both countries was their respective governments’ pro-active site-blocking initiative.
Australia, which passed website blocking laws in 2015, experienced a 53% reduction in the use of pirate sites targeted by a blocking order in the span of just three years, according to the Australian Screen Association. A separate report by Incopro, an enterprise brand protection firm, said overall piracy in Australia decreased 25% year on year.
“We are missing out on a lot by continuing to drag our feet in this issue of piracy,” said Abejo.
The Oxford Business Group has said that creative industries are a potential growth pillar of the Philippines. According to a 2014 study conducted by IPOPHL and commissioned by the World Intellectual Property Organization, copyright-based industries contributed 14.14% to Philippine employment and accounted for 7.34% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2010.
“We call on our lawmakers to make this a priority. The IPOPHL needs to be enabled and empowered to do its job. These pirates are always thinking of the next way they can outsmart the system and profit from it, and we should show them we are up to the task of protecting IP rights,” Abejo said.