MANILA, Philippines — 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.
“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 Tim Abejo, convenor of CitizenWatch Philippines, in a statement.
“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.
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 agency’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 National Telecommunications Commission. 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,” Barba said.
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 said this would encourage copyright holders, and even trademark owners, to be bolder in filing complaints against IP violations in the online space.
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.