The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) expressed hope a bill giving it site-blocking powers can be passed into law ahead of lawmakers’ recess next year.
Christine Pangilinan-Canlapan, IPOPHL intellectual property rights enforcement office supervising director, said this will be a great addition to the agency’s enforcement powers given the outdated provisions of the Intellectual Property Code (IP) of 1988.
Other bills that could strengthen intellectual property rights in the Philippines are likewise pending before the Congress —creation of an IP enforcement bureau within the IPOPHL office that will focus on counterfeiting; the institutionalization and funding of the national committee on intellectual property rights, as well as increase in penalty for the code’s violators.
Speaking at the The Piracy-Cybercime Nexus: Risks to Users and Challenges disrupting the Criminal Ecosystem” symposium, Canlapan said the passage of the site blocking law proposed under Senate Bills 2150, 2385, 2651 and House Bill 7600 will formalize the IPOPHL’s current voluntary administrative site blocking initiative to prevent online piracy in the country. The draft bills also set penalties.
“We are limited by the law under the IP Code, which does not cover piracy yet because it was enacted way, way before,” she added.
Canlapang said losses were estimated to reach $781 million for video piracy alone based on a study by Media Partner Asia.
Paul Watters, honorary professor of securities studies and criminology at Macquarie University in Australia, said Filipinos are risking more of their security in accessing digital piracy site — fraudulent sites, illegal streaming services, proxy sites, P2P (peer-to-peer) sites, and IPTV (internet protocol TV) platforms.
Watters said Filipino consumers are 27.90 times more likely to encounter a cyber threat when using piracy sites compared to mainstream websites.
When compared to a set of sites that comprise the most popular 30 legal film/TV sites in the Philippines, the relative cybersecurity risk involved in accessing piracy sites were 33 times greater for P2P sites, 32 times greater for streaming sites, 30 times greater for fraudulent sites, 16 times greater for IPTV sites, and 28.50 times greater for proxy sites. The study noted the widespread proliferation of digital piracy in the Philippines is driven particularly by high demand for free or low-cost content, relatively low levels of digital literacy among some segments of the population, and the availability of pirated content through various online platforms.
