Digital piracy on rise due to Covid-19; Pinoy netizens top illegal users
Cyber World

Digital piracy on rise due to Covid-19; Pinoy netizens top illegal users

May 3, 2021, 8:03 AM
JM Taylo

JM Taylo

Writer

With more people forced at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, increased access to pirated movies, shows and software has become a top concern for the country’s intellectual property regulators.

While the coronavirus disease continues to push new waves of infection rates across the globe due to new variants and as more people are forced to stay longer at home, another prevalent problem is gripping the world: rise of internet piracy.

According to a February report by the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL), the agency received 121 complaints on counterfeiting and piracy in 2020 during the pandemic, which is higher than 2019.

The IP Rights Enforcement Office of IPOPHL shows that 67 of alleged violations are about counterfeiting while the other 54 were on the illegal sharing and selling of copyrighted works.

Data also shows that of the total counterfeiting reports, apparels were the most prevalent at 77 percent, followed by gadgets (10 percent) and cosmetics (9 percent).

Internet piracy

On the other hand, movies and shows were the top complaints for alleged piracy with 40 percent of reports, followed by E-books (25 percent) and software products (16 percent)

About 90% of the reports were found to be distributed and marketed online on platforms like Facebook at 61 percent, followed by “unpopular websites” at 13 percent, Shopee at 12 percent, Lazada at 7 percent, and YouTube at 2 percent.

“The exponential growth in online activities during the pandemic created the perfect entry point for pirates and counterfeiters as they took advantage of both legitimate (e.g e-commerce sites, social media) and illicit avenues (e.g dark web sites),” said IPOPHL Deputy Director General Teodoro Pascua.

“The disruption in supply chains gave counterfeiters an opportunity to fill the gap with substandard, IP infringing products. The environment was equally lucrative for content pirates as people sought to find free sources of entertainment with many spending most of their time at home,” he added.

Blocking websites

IPOHL said it will ink a memorandum of understanding with the country’s leading Internet service providers (ISPs) and the government’s National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) in establishing a mechanism that will block pirated web sites.

“Rest assured that IPOPHL and its anti-piracy partners will work hard to ensure the successful and timely removal of their pirated content online and avert the losses of an already struggling industry,” Pascua remarked.

The agency also announced that they will team up with Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) for information and technical knowledge sharing as well as by setting up a piracy monitoring and rolling site blocking strategies aimed to curb piracy.

Half of “piracy violators” are Pinoys

In a YouGov survey conducted in September 2020, almost half (about 49 percent) of Filipinos netizens access piracy site such as torrent and other streaming sites, significantly higher compared to neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia.

The survey, commissioned by AVIA’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP), showed that Filipinos ages 25 to 34 were the highest users of online piracy services in the country, at 53 percent.

Cheaper alternative

“When the pandemic worsened, our family’s income was also affected, so we decided to cut off unnecessary expenses we have like subscribing to Netflix,” Justin (not his real name) told OpinYon. “But if you’re stuck at home for over a year now, you’d need to find something to distract yourself with, so I use online streaming websites.”

Justin also noted that these web-based pirate streaming sites offer an endless list of movies and TV series in multiple genres and from different countries which popular platforms like Netflix cannot provide.

He added that he gets the entertainment he needs by spending “zero pesos” for films or series he will usually have to pay separately to Netflix, Disney, Amazon, or HBO.

“Spending a thousand plus pesos on computer games is too much for me; you can download the same game in the internet for free including DLCs (downloadable contents) which will also cost you more than a thousand pesos,” said Carlo (also not his real name) when he was asked about the prevalence of online piracy in the gaming community.

Both said they understand their action is illegal but seem to downplay its seriousness as both cited most, if not all, people they know and in the respective groups they belong, are doing the same thing as if it is a “normal” practice.

“You got people and communities here and abroad who maximizes pirate websites. You can also find hundreds of blogs, article, [and] YouTube videos telling you how to use or download at these sites. It’s an open secret,” Carlo added.

“Personally, I think we cannot blame the people for using such pirated services. It has helped them on many aspects of their lives; [for] their mental health, for their job, studies, etc.”

Online Infringement Act

As a response to these malpractices which is hurting several industries, a bill called the Online Infringement Act is currently in the Upper House of the Philippine Congress.

The bill hopes to give authorities power to direct internet services providers "to disable access to sites whenever [they] are reported to be infringing copyright or facilitating copyright infringement." (JT)

Tags: #Covid19, #internetpiracy, #IntellectualPropertyOfficeofthePhilippines


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