Stephens on content piracy
Associate faculty Hugh Stpehens, an expert on Asia-Pacific business and government relations, examines content piracy and recent legislation in the Philippines for ABS CBN News.
Here is an excerpt:
What has brought about this change in the Philippines? It is a combination of alignment of the interests of the key players, combined with strong local leadership and some external assistance, prompted by a realization that consistently high levels of piracy serve no-one’s interests. The lesson from last year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) no doubt played a role as a catalyst. The Festival has been highlighting the best of Filipino talent since the 1970s. In 2020, because of COVID-19, it went virtual. COVID had already forced many theatres to close, thus leading to a surge in consumption of streaming content. Last year the MMFF tried to offset the loss of box office revenue through Video-on-Demand streaming but the result was a disaster. Because of widespread piracy, receipts totalled less than two percent of 2019 revenues.
[…]
Often the enemy of introducing new measures to fight piracy is inertia and bureaucratic process, sometimes combined with misguided arguments that any attempt to deal with pirated content through blocking orders amounts to “internet censorship”. While the experience of the MMFF may or may not have been the spark that lit the fire, the leadership of key local players in the Philippines to address the serious piracy issues was critical. Among these is Globe Telecom, the largest telecom company in the country and a major distributor of online content. Several years ago, Globe launched a public awareness campaign against piracy and illicit content on the internet called “#Play it Right”. The objectives of Globe’s campaign are to combat illicit content on its networks, including pirated content and online child exploitation, and to protect its customers from malware, ID theft and ransomware, often by-products that come with accessing pirate sites.