The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) is hoping for a significant decline in the consumption of pirated content as it finds a new ally in award-winning artist, singer, host, tri-athlete and Philippine Army reservist Matteo Guidicelli, the newest face of IPOPHL’s anti-piracy campaign.
“With a credible and trustworthy figure at the forefront of our anti-piracy advocacy, we hope to cut through to a larger population of Filipinos, especially the youth. We want more Filipinos to see more clearly how piracy is robbing the creative economy of revenues and the government of much-needed taxes,” Director General Rowel S. Barba said on Thursday at IPOPHL’s office in Taguig City.
At the event, IPOPHL, Guidicelli and his manager, Viva Artists Agency, Inc., signed the contract that outlines activities both parties will be undertaking throughout the year-long ambassadorship.
Viva and Guidicelli commit to create video campaigns to show the importance of respecting others’ intellectual property (IP) rights. IPOPHL, on the other hand, commits to conduct a free learning event designed to help the new ambassador, Viva and other select piracy-affected industries in protecting their IP assets more effectively.
A true artist for artists
Barba described Guidicelli as the “perfect face” for the campaign, noting that the celebrity’s illustrious career both as an actor and a music artist allows him to identify with fellow artists who fight tooth and nail to protect their works from content thieves.
As an actor, Guidicelli won CinemaOne Originals’ “Best Actor” Award in 2013 for his performance as John in the thriller movie “Saturday Night Chills.” In 2011, he was named the “Most Promising Male Star of the Year” by the GMMSF Box-Office Entertainment Awards and garnered the “Outstanding Breakthrough Performance by an Actor” Award from the Golden Screen TV Awards for his role as Ronnie in the fantasy TV series “Agua Bendita.”
Guidicelli’s music career, meanwhile, started as early as 2015 with the launch of his first album “Matteo Guidicelli,” followed by “Hey” in 2017. He has since released several singles, such as Sundo (2019), I Just Wanna Be Your Man (2020) and The Gift (2022) — the last one sang in tandem with his wife and Asia’s Popstar Royalty Sarah Geronimo.
“According to IPOPHL, bilyon-bilyon ang nawawala sa creative sectors dahil sa piracy. This threatens the livelihood of 6.98 million Filipino creative industry workers, and of course, their families. As the ambassador for Anti-Piracy, my advocacy will focus on guiding the public towards an IP-safe environment, where artistic creations are protected from piracy and other IP rights violations,” Guidicelli said.
IPOPHL’s newest anti-piracy project is co-funded by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to address awareness gaps identified in a survey conducted by IPOPHL and WIPO in 2021.
Piracy, skewed to the youth
The Baseline Study on IP Awareness found that out of five age groups, it was the youngest that patronized pirated digital content the most.
“The worst and most challenging part sa pagkalat ng piracy is pati ang values ng ating kabataan napipirata (The worst and most challenging part in the proliferation of piracy is that the values of our youth are also being pirated off),” Barba added.
Out of 1,000 respondents, 35%, 31% and 28% of those who respectively downloaded free music, video games and movies online and 14% of those who read free ebooks come from the youngest group segment, with ages 18 to 19. The group segment also sources free copies from their friends and Youtube.
According to the survey, some young respondents cited the ease in accessing free content compared to buying from authorized sellers, and that their peers do it anyway.
The baseline survey also assessed IPOPHL’s current awareness campaign online and found its previous content linked to a celebrity ambassador as having the most visibility and “potential to change behavior.”
“Content pirates are thieves, robbing us of economic leverage, of our culture and of our own values of what is right, which is to play fair. It is high time we denounce content pirates the way we do thieves. And we are optimistic that with Matteo, Viva and WIPO working together with IPOPHL, the message becomes more compelling and urgent to embrace,“ Deputy Director General Ann Claire C. Cabochan said.