Measure protecting Pinoy creative artists OK’d

MANILA, Philippines — The committee on trade and industry of the House of Representatives has approved a bill to protect the intellectual property rights of Filipino creative artists and help bolster the country’s economic recovery.

The panel headed by Rep. Mario Vittorio Marino of Batangas’ fifth district passed House Bill 7028, which will institutionalize the blocking of websites, hosting pirated content such as movies, television series, television shows, videos and songs.

Its author, Rep. Joey Salceda, said this piece of legislation will “prevent the further erosion of revenues from the creative industry and spur the industry to greater heights” brought about by the problem of intellectual property rights that includes piracy.

“As content has become more easily transmissible in the digital space, infringement has also become more prevalent in the online space. As such, a more dynamic and proactive manner to prevent such infringement is necessary, but is currently unclear or absent in current law,” he said.

Per his own estimates, between 7.3 percent to as high as 15 percent of the economy relies on copyrighted material. By protecting the creative industry and its ecosystem, he expects this to deliver a larger share of the economy especially with the digitalization of consumers and businesses.

“Particularly, there is a need for an explicit mandate and clear regulations and standards to allow Rights Holders to apply to the Intellectual Property Office to order the disabling of access to Infringing Piracy Services,” the Albay congressman said.

The measure lists down the procedures for intellectual property rights holders like content creators to request for website blocking and ensures that the process observes due process requirements.

Salceda further explained that during the pandemic-induced lockdowns starting 2020, online content piracy caused an estimated loss of P1 billion in potential revenue to local video producers, distributors and aggregators, citing a study by Media Partners Asia.

In 2020, the Metro Manila Film Fest posted the lowest revenue turnout in its history as local movies were pirated and sold online via streaming or downloads. The movie festival only grossed about P20 million, well short of the P955 million in 2019 and P1.060 billion in 2018.

“Such losses were most felt during the 2020 Metro Manila Film Festival, which had to migrate to streaming due to COVID-19 restrictions,” he said.

Salceda also lauded the approval by the House committee of trade and industry of House Bill 799, a comprehensive reform of the Intellectual Property Code.

This bill which he also authored intends to make the Intellectual Property Code more suitable to the current digital era. The last revision of the IP Code was in 2013 when digitalization was not yet as widespread as it is now.

“Let’s run both horses and see which one goes faster. But we need site-blocking powers urgently because that will help put an end to stealing from Filipino content creators and creatives. This is an extrajudicial way of enforcing IP rights. Courts simply do not have the time or bandwidth to handle digital IP violations in a way that reduces harm immediately,” Salceda said.

Senate tackles Tatak Pinoy bills

Meanwhile, senators tackled yesterday several bills representing the spirit of Tatak Pinoy or Proudly Filipino, part of the government’s efforts to support local industries, level up exports, create jobs and make the economy more vibrant and competitive.

Sen. Sonny Angara, subcommittee chairman of the Senate committee on trade, commerce and entrepreneurship, presided over the hearing of several measures intended to enhance the capabilities, processes and quality of goods produced by Philippine enterprises.

“These bills are to make Philippine products more competitive to ensure higher quality and see how government can assist the private sector in coming up with better offerings, more competitive offerings,” said Angara.

“These solve a lot of problems with the view towards an industrial policy which not only produces quality goods but also creates quality jobs for our countrymen.”

He said these “perhaps in the future may reverse some of the brain drain occurring in certain industries. And of course, with the view also towards inclusive development and some of the bills pointing towards increased or assistance to the MSME sector. –  Cecille Suerte Felipe