The digital revolution in the television industry is currently facing unprecedented challenges in terms of content security and copyright protection. These difficulties necessitate the emergence of new solutions to ensure that content remains unaffected by a variety of copyright infringement-related risks.
On September 26th, under the theme ‘Addressing Copyright Protection Issues in the Music, Film, and Digital Television Industry,’ the Vietnam Digital Communications Association (VDCA) collaborated with Hanoi Multimedia to organize an event aimed at finding innovative solutions to these challenges.
Following the seminar, the online news portal baoangiang.com also published an article:
Vietnam ranks third in the region in terms of copyright infringement, with 15.5 million people regularly accessing illegal websites. In 2022, copyright infringement caused Vietnam losses of $350 million…
At the seminar ‘Solving the Copyright Protection Puzzle for the Digital Music, Film, and Television Industry’ held on September 26 in Hanoi, many experts believe that if Vietnam effectively combats copyright violations, it will create favorable conditions for the development of the digital content industry.
Copyright Violations in Vietnam: Third in the Region, Ninth in the World Mr. Pham Hoang Hai, Director of the Center for Measurement of Radio and Television Broadcasting and Electronic Information, an entity under the Ministry of Information and Communications, stated that copyright violations are currently complex, with numerous illegal websites (pirate websites) for both football and movies. According to SimilarWeb data, there are currently about 70 pirate football websites, with over 1.5 billion views in 2022 and 2023.
SimilarWeb’s data also indicates that there are over 200 pirate movie websites attracting approximately 120 million views per month, with the top 10 receiving over 66 million views each month. Recently, some pirate websites have shifted to the Japanese anime genre. Copyright infringement in the realm of manga has garnered strong reactions from copyright owners in Japan regarding violations in Vietnam.
Mr. Pham Hoang Hai, Director of the Center for Measurement of Radio and Television Broadcasting and Electronic Information Copyright infringement is highly complex, with numerous pirate websites for both football and movies.
According to statistics, from August 2022 to August 2023, the Center for Measurement of Radio and Television Broadcasting and Electronic Information has cooperated with the Information Security Agency and copyright owners to block nearly 1,000 pirate football websites such as xoilac.1tiengruoi.link, xoivo4.com, coichua.net, tammao.tv, 90link.com, xoilac.live, and xemtructiep.xyz. The list of infringing websites is published on the copyright.gov.vn website.
Lawyer Pham Thanh Thuy, in charge of copyright infringement prevention at K+ Digital Television, cited Media Partners Asia data, stating that Vietnam ranks third in the region for the copyright violation rate, with 15.5 million people regularly accessing illegal websites. However, according to Thuy, when measured per capita, Vietnam ranks first in the region for copyright violations.
Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Han, CEO of Hanoi Multimedia Company, added that Vietnam ranks third in copyright violations in Southeast Asia and ninth globally. Eighty percent of violations occur on digital platforms, with the most infringed content including television programs, films, music, and books. “Copyright infringement in Vietnam in 2022 resulted in approximately $350 million in damages,” Han said, adding that the global copyright infringement damages for the film, music, and television industries in 2022 amounted to $65 billion.
Effective Measures Against Copyright Infringement Will Require Additional Investment Analysts believe that the characteristics of copyright-infringing websites include the use of international domain names and hidden information services, public operations, and frequent domain name changes when blocked. These pirate websites often display harmful advertisements, gambling, and casinos.
A typical form of copyright infringement on digital platforms is that after copyright owners broadcast or publish content on platforms such as OTT, terrestrial digital television, and satellite digital television, violators immediately engage in live streaming or re-upload the content on social media, or cut and publish the content.
According to Mr. Pham Hoang Hai, technical measures are being implemented, with the Center for Measurement of Radio and Television Broadcasting and Electronic Information working together with the Information Security Agency (under the Ministry of Information and Communications) and copyright owners to detect copyright infringements, verify and investigate infringing content, and request Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access for Internet users in Vietnam to infringing websites. In other words, users in Vietnam using smartphones and computers will be unable to access infringing websites, while users abroad can still access them. In this case, the managing entity only blocks access within Vietnam’s territory.
The process involves copyright owners submitting applications with supporting documents demonstrating their rights and evidence of infringements. State agencies will review and decide on the block, after which ISPs (Internet service providers) will proceed to block and stop providing DNS services for the domains of pirate websites, as requested by state agencies.
Lawyer Pham Thanh Thuy stated that there are currently various technical measures to combat copyright violations in the digital environment, such as technical measures – creating codes and locks to prevent unauthorized access, such as encrypting content using DRM methods. When some individuals intentionally violate copyright despite the presence of codes, additional measures like fingerprinting or watermarking may be applied. Each subscriber receives a unique identifier, and if that person illegally live streams content from their subscription on the internet, television stations can activate that subscriber’s identifier and thereby identify the copyright infringer.
Additionally, there are legal measures to support copyright owners, including administrative, civil, criminal, and Notice & Takedown measures. However, according to Thuy, the implementation of legal measures faces many challenges. Furthermore, in today’s conditions, applying administrative, civil, and criminal measures is very difficult, and the duration of cases is lengthy, about 2-3 years. A typical example is the Phimmoi case, which lasted 4 years.
The Center for Digital Copyright Protection and many experts believe that to effectively prevent online copyright infringement, there must be coordination between copyright owners, state management agencies, and ISPs; a flexible blocking mechanism must be established to block newly emerging domains after blocking; different technical measures must be applied to block access (DNS, IP, CDN). Moreover, the development of automatic blocking tools should be considered to reduce time and human resources.
“In a total of 15.5 million subscribers who watch pirated content, if only 10% of them switch to legal subscriptions, the companies will have additional funds to reinvest in producing or acquiring the rights to valuable content. This will contribute to the development of the digital content industry in Vietnam,” said Lawyer Pham Thanh Thuy.”
Source: Vietnam lost 350 million USD due to copyright infringement
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