Anti-piracy bills referred to Senate panel TWG

The bills seeking to strengthen the powers and functions of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to protect the creative industry against online piracy has been referred to the technical working group which will refine it before presenting to the Senate trade, commerce, and entrepreneurship committee.

Senator Jinggoy Estrada said that revising and updating the scope of the country's intellectual property code is a 'must' to help quash Filipino cinema's greatest threat—piracy, noting the continuous loss that the creative industry bleeds due to this crime.

Estrada, author of Senate Bill 2150, said piracy "deeply hurts the creative industry."

"[T]here is a need to establish regulations and effective mechanisms to protect intellectual property rights. This bill proposes to disable access to online sites which facilitate copyright infringement and introduces procedure for preventive action and site blocking," he said in SB 2150.

Senator Ramon Bong Revilla also filed Senate Bill 2385 to "empower the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines to disable access to sites which infringes copyright and initiate action for site blocking."

The counterpart measures of the proposed bills have been passed by the House of Representatives in May 2023.

The Philippines currently does not have a legislative mandate to block sites with pirated content. The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL), the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), and internet service providers are only teaming up to put up stop-gap measures to block sites with pirated content.

They, however, said that this is only voluntary and administrative in nature.

In a consultative meeting held last April 18, IPOPHL welcomed the proposed bills, noting that it has been advocating for the amendment of the 27-year-old Intellectual Property Code to include the authority to disable access to online sites infringing copyrighted materials.

The agency expressed its readiness to implement and enforce the law upon passage.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology along with the law enforcement agencies also manifested their commitment to cooperate and lend support to the moves against online piracy.

Representatives from the internet service providers (ISPs) likewise supported the measures and stressed that site blocking bills would also address other components such as detection and reporting which they said are essential in the fight against piracy.—Hana Bordey/AOL, GMA Integrated News