Jan Van Voorn, Executive Vice President & Chief of Global Content Protection and Head of ACE, on June 29 spoke with VietNamNet about copyright infringement in Vietnam and other parts of the world.

He said that piracy has a heavy impact on the economy. Studies show that Vietnam might incur losses of at least 20 percent of potential revenue in the content industry. 

As a result, enterprises might not be able to receive investment or recruit workers. 

Piracy is also related to illegal activities such as money laundering, tax evasion and malware distribution.

Stressing that copyright infringement in Vietnam has entered a new phase, with many big pirated websites managed by Vietnamese, Jan cited zoro.to as an example. This is a website providing pirated anime for free, with no required account registration.

According to SimilarWeb, zoro.to now ranks 180th in the world and sixth among streaming websites and online TV programs in the US. The website attracts 200 million visits a month, mostly from the US and India.  

In general, for pirated websites, ACE will apply flexible treatment methods, including the "knock and talk".  After finding the operators of the pirated websites through investigations, the alliance will meet and work directly with them.

The subjects that ACE targets are not end users, but operators, i.e., the most serious violators and the operators of websites with the highest number of visits. 

If the knock and talk is ineffective, the alliance will transfer the documents of the case to state management agencies and ask for support. However, only 5 percent of the hundreds of cases that ACE has dealt with have had to be forwarded to a higher level.

ACE also applies measures to enhance end-users’ awareness. When regaining the right to operate the website, ACE will redirect visitors to its website and explain possible harmful effects when using pirated websites.

The other measure is use of key opinion leaders (KOL). In the Philippines, for example, ACE asks KOLs not to watch pirated content and to call on followers to do the same.

ACE hopes that Vietnam will have a global approach and recognition. The fight against copyright infringement will also need the participation of intermediary organizations such as ISPs, and advertising and payment units.

Du Lam