House panel OKS bill protecting IP rights of content creators, creatives

THE House Committee of Trade and Industry on Tuesday approved the proposed comprehensive reform of the Intellectual Property Code, and a bill allowing the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines to block web sites showing infringed content.

Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda said House Bill 799 and House Bill 7028 seek to support Filipino digital creatives.

“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,” Salceda said.

“You cannot own what you cannot defend. That’s why these powers are just as important as actions to promote content creation,” he added.

Salceda said that between 7.3 percent to as much as 15 percent of the economy relies on copyrighted material, and is expected to be an even larger share of the economy with greater digitalization.

“And more media and creatives are moving towards the digital space. Vivamax, IWANTTV, among others create and stream Filipino content. They will lose out, along with the jobs they create, if we don’t block pirated content,” he said.

Citing a study by Media Partners Asia, Salceda said at the start of the pandemicinduced lockdowns, online content piracy was estimated to have translated to P1 billion in potential revenue losses to local video producers, distributors and aggregators in 2020.

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