Celebrating the kick off of this year’s celebration of World Intellectual Property (IP) Day, with the theme centered on “Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined”, local industry players gathered to encourage a wider audience to consume digital content safely.
Composed of movie studios, online video-on-demand providers, filmmakers, and government agencies, the singular message was clear: the strong encouragement of Filipinos to partake of safe and legal sources of online entertainment. With its population of over 101 million citizens, mostly composed of young (and possibly tech savvy) millennials around 24 years old, the Philippines is poised to be one of the most promising digital markets in the world. Close to half of the country’s total population are active internet users. And as internet usage continues to grow, so does internet-based infringement—and in the Philippines is said to have racked up close to 200 million pirated movies and TV shows shared on P2P networks in 2015.
Digital harm
With that number indicating that Filipinos are actively engaged in online infringing activities, consuming a significant amount of valuable bandwidth, further online or tech progress cannot be enjoyed if piracy gets out of hand. “We cannot expect to become a leading digital economy unless we are able to reduce online piracy to insignificant levels,” claims Monchito Ibrahim, Deputy Executive Director of the Information and Communications Technology Office, Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ICTO).
A representative of Wilson Tieng, President of Solar Entertainment, read out his statement condemning piracy: “Creators aren’t the only ones harmed by content piracy. Unscrupulous individuals and organizations also prey on users of these sites for identity theft and other malicious scams. Each illegal access costs creators of movies, music and TV shows significant losses in revenue, but it also means serious threats to the users’ online security.”
But with the emergence of several legitimate subscription-based content streaming services, Filipinos can now enjoy affordable access to a wide selection of music, TV and film. And as the Philippines moves towards a digital economy, the cooperation of its online population is key to ensuring the sustained growth of the creative community.
RAMPing vs. piracy
Banding together, the Intellectual Property Office Philippines (IPOPhil), Motion Picture Association (MPA), United States Embassy, and the Korean Copyright Commission (KCC), along with the country’s leading video-on-demand service providers Blink, Hooq and iflix, launched Rise Against Movie Piracy Philippines (RAMP-PH) a video-making contest for Manila-based film students to raise awareness on the importance of respecting copyrighted content by obtaining them only through legal means.
The contest seeks to encourage today’s youth to support films by watching the theatrical release and refraining from pirated media such as torrents or peer-to-peer sites. As digital natives, today’s youth consume content mainly online through their mobile or PC devices. By patronizing legal sources such as subscription-based streaming services, Filipino TV and movie fans help the creative community to continue making movies and TV programs that audiences love.
“The film industry is an important component of the country’s creative industries which generates substantial employment opportunities. The intellectual property system recognizes the vital role of the creative sector and provides them with incentives to their creations. The respect of the intellectual property rights of the creators and producers of films and movies is therefore important and should be inculcated in the minds of the youth who are not only the movie goers and film watchers but are also the future artists, creators, and filmmakers of this country,” said Josephine Santiago, Director General, Intellectual Property Office Philippines (IPOPHL). “The IPOPHL, thus, supports this contest as an awareness campaign among the youth on the importance of protecting intellectual property rights and preventing the on-line piracy of films, movies and TV shows.”
Submission of entries will be open from 01 May to 06 August and awarding will be in September 2016. To find out more details about the contest, visit the Rise Against Movie Piracy Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/rampph2016/.
This article is based on a press release.
