- ABS-CBN reported big losses due to piracy.
- Facebook was identified as the top choice for sharing pirated content.
Media giant ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. estimated it loses 300 to 400 million due to piracy in 2018.
In a sideline interview with the reporters, ABS-CBN Head of Information Security and Data Protection Jay Gomez said the company has lost millions of revenues due to unauthorized use and sharing of contents including the movies produced by its sister company Star Cinema.
Gomez said that the country’s second highest grossing film of all time The Hows of Us could have reached 1 billion in gross receipts if not for piracy.
He also attributed the proliferation of piracy with the advent of social media and advancement in the technology of mobile devices.
“Ten years ago, social media was not that prevalent. Second, data. There’s also the advent of smartphones,” he said.
Gomez mentioned Facebook as the top choice of people in pirating their contents.He also added the some reasons Filipinos patronize film piracy and that includes the belief that they will not get caught and get penalized for it.
Meanwhile, Optical Media Board Chairman and Chief Executive Anselmo B. Adriano, said that the agency’s mandate has not been expanded to penalize piracy outside of storage-based forms like CDs and flash drives that is why social media has been a top choice in pirating content.
“There has to be a physical storage device. Anything on the internet, technically speaking, so if you share links — it is not part of our mandate,” he said.
