Need to resolutely handle lawsuits on digital content copyright

The lingering lawsuits

As social networks and OTT platforms develop, copyright protection becomes more challenging, as about 80% of violations are on digital platforms. Piracy groups may be located in Vietnam, but use fake addresses to get content from abroad and broadcast it to Vietnamese people, affecting the revenue and reputation of domestic services that have purchased copyrights. According to the latest figures, content copyright infringement is estimated to cost Vietnam about 350 million USD in 2022.

According to the assessment of the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information ( Ministry of Information and Communications ), copyright infringement of digital content tends to increase, mainly in entertainment such as football, movies, game shows, music, etc.

Data from Media Partners Asia shows that Vietnam is among the top three countries in the region in terms of copyright infringement, with 15.5 million people regularly accessing illegal websites. In terms of population ratio, Vietnam leads Southeast Asia.

Resolutely handle lawsuits about copyright of image content 1 — Phimmoi is a pirated movie website ranked among the pirated websites that violate copyright internationally.

Commenting on the above "startling" number, lawyer Pham Thanh Thuy - Head of anti-piracy of K+ television said that for the business of content copyright owners, if out of 15.5 million viewers on illegal websites, only 10% of them convert to legal subscribers, then this money can be used to reinvest in valuable products and content, or buy movies, special sports programs, thereby creating jobs for the creative industry, meaning that many services will follow if copyright protection is done well.

Evaluating current legal regulations, Ms. Thuy analyzed that, regarding administrative handling of digital content copyright infringement, when making a decision to impose an administrative penalty, the prerequisite is to know who the subject is and where they are? "But for illegal websites, we cannot identify them, for example, the sites Phimmoi, Xoilac... cannot identify the specific subject, and what kind of team is behind them? Administrative sanctions seem infeasible for illegal websites with foreign domain names," Ms. Thuy said.

The second measure that lawyer Thuy mentioned is civil handling, there are some civil lawsuits that have taken place, but it is not known how many years it will last. According to Ms. Thuy, in order to file a lawsuit in court, requesting the violating entity to compensate for damages, first of all, it is necessary to prove the damage, or determine the amount of illegal profits from the violating entity - this is extremely difficult, currently there is no formula to calculate those specific numbers.

"For example, on the Phimmoi page, a movie A has 100,000 views, how will we estimate the value of 1 view, can it be converted to 1 subscription on K+? Or a movie is showing in theaters and someone livestreams, can the number of views on that link be multiplied by the ticket price in theaters? Until now, those questions still have no answers, there are no specific instructions. This is the reason why copyright infringement lawsuits continue to drag on," said Ms. Thuy.

Resolutely handle lawsuits about copyright of image content 2 — Lawyer Pham Thanh Thuy - In charge of anti-copyright infringement of K+ television said that lawsuits related to digital content copyright infringement are all calculated by year, or come to a dead end.

For criminal cases, according to Ms. Pham Thanh Thuy, the difficulty is even greater. Ms. Thuy said that in 2019, K+, BHD and MPAA - Motion Picture Association of America were the first units to file a complaint against the Phimmoi website for violating copyright and related rights with the Economic Police Department (PC03), Ho Chi Minh City Police. Until now, 5 years have passed, this lawsuit has also reached a dead end. The development only revolves around the story of verifying the damage.

"The Phimmoi website has thousands of movies, how many movies are there for K+, BHD, and MPAA? And to find out the source of revenue for Phimmoi, how do they collect money from users and advertisers? We cannot work with Google to get how much advertising revenue is from selling illegal content. Next, if we can get a number, how will the percentage be divided among the 3 representatives who filed the lawsuit? There are many, many conditions that have caused this case to reach a deadlock," said lawyer Thuy.

In another development, the website that most blatantly and seriously violated the copyright of broadcasting many major international tournaments is “Xoilac TV”. And up to this point, XoilacTV is still brazenly operating illegally in Vietnam, attracting a huge number of viewers.

Currently, XoilacTV broadcasts live many football matches in V.League, Champions League, La Liga, Premier League and many other major tournaments. Most of the matches they broadcast live attract a lot of attention from Vietnamese football fans.

Not only that, when commenting on a match, XoilacTV's "commentators" also advertise for 8xbet (a bookmaker headquartered in Curacao) 4 times. On the website xoilac.tv, there are also many advertising banners for this bookmaker.

In addition to illegally broadcasting matches on the website xoilac.tv, XoilacTV also has an application for Android smartphone users that can be downloaded on the Google Play store.

However, xoilac.tv was registered in the US in October 2017, because this website does not have a server in Vietnam, it is very difficult to apply Vietnamese law to handle it. With the acts of violating television copyright and illegal betting advertising in Vietnam in recent years, XoilacTV has certainly earned a huge amount of illegal money.

According to lawyer Pham Thanh Thuy, "Xoilac has changed many domain names since its inception, we cannot request administrative handling, nor can we file a civil lawsuit, the only thing we can do is block access, we have blocked hundreds of Xoilac domains, and are waiting for support from state management agencies".

Decree 17 needs to be promoted more strongly.

Decree No. 17/2023 of the Government has many new points in detailing a number of articles and measures to implement the Law on Intellectual Property on copyright and related rights. Will this Decree solve the difficult problem of copyright, as well as bring brighter colors to the very gloomy picture of digital copyright infringement?

As the person in charge of fighting copyright infringement of K+ television, lawyer Pham Thanh Thuy said that K+ is closely following each provision of Decree 17. For websites that infringe copyright of English Premier League football, K+ often sends notices in advance to confirm legal rights, K+ is the exclusive partner in Vietnam, what kind of football matches will be in the future and requests network operators to comply.

Resolutely handle lawsuits about copyright of image content 3 — The website that most blatantly and seriously violates the copyright of broadcasting many major international tournaments is “Xoilac TV”. (Photo: danviet)

"The official letters and emails we send from the law firm usually receive responses from the network providers 1-2 weeks later and they also give many reasons. For example, with movies, we send them and the network providers make requests, to remove the movie, we have to prove that the movie is stored by them, on the server, on their hosting or rental service - basically these conditions are very difficult to prove. In fact, in the past 5 months, we are still groping and have not been able to apply the method of sending a direct request to the intermediary service providers," Ms. Thuy shared.

Lawyer Thuy commented that Decree 17 is still quite early and the Copyright Office (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) itself, which is the agency that drafted this Decree, has not organized many propaganda events, so some network operators are not aware of their rights and responsibilities. Therefore, the coordination has not been as expected by legal entities such as K+.

As someone who has been in contact with and resolved many cases related to digital content copyright, lawyer Ha Lien - Representative of Phan Law Firm expressed his opinion and agreed that Decree 17 has many bright spots, new points, and very strict regulations on the mechanism for rights holders to work with network service providers (ISPs) to remove infringing information.

Ms. Ha Lien said that Phan Law also sends written notices, and after discovering copyright infringement, it also sends official dispatches requesting ISPs to comply with Decree 17. However, the implementation is very difficult when they give opinions, first about proving the right holder, secondly they give documents requesting to prove the information stored on their servers. Not all right holders know about this content. Therefore, in the past 5 months, the units have been diligently sending official dispatches but the responses from intermediary service providers have not shown any positive signs.

"And in fact, up to now, Vietnam has had regulations on precedents, however, the Intellectual Property Law has never had a precedent passed. Hopefully in the future, the Council of Judges of the Supreme People's Court will have a precedent on regulations, like having a decision mechanism for similar cases, what the level of compensation will be to ensure the rights of the right holder - because investing in an intellectual product is very expensive," lawyer Ha Lien stated.

Phan Hoa Giang

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