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Developments Related to New Copyright Regime in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing copyrights in the Kingdom of Thailand.  There have been some recent developments with respect to copyright that are of note.

In a recent article from the Bangkok Post titled:  "New Copyright Protection Center Debuts". This article is dated December 19th, 2018.  Quoting directly, "A new Government center was launched yesterday to protect parties affected by widespread infringement of intellectual property online with the goal of stopping offenders’ activities over the course of one to three days while waiting for the results of a formal investigation.” Quoting further,  "Takorn Tantasith, Secretary General of the NBTC said the US and Japanese Embassy have become partners in this new movement to fight intellectual property infringement."  Quoting further, "In the past, it normally took seven to eight months before a court order was issued to take action against an offender he said.  Now when the Center receives a complaint, police investigators and the NBTC will work together to find out if the complaint is credible."  And another addendum article that I thought was noteworthy; again from the Bangkok Post. The article is titled: Three Companies Quick to File Piracy Complaints.  Quoting directly "Three Companies in the Thai motion, picture industry association filed complaints Tuesday through the newly-established government anti-piracy agency requesting that violating websites be blocked within 3 days rather than the current procedure which takes 6 months." I urge those who are watching this video to go ahead and check out these articles. There is a lot more information on sort of the first of all the evolution of how this came about, the actual agency itself, and some of the new regulations and well frankly, the new faster timelines.  But as you can see, you can see action from an enforcement standpoint on this matter within a matter of days as opposed to a matter of multiple months in the past and this is going to be in my opinion a rather significant benefit to those who hold intellectual property rights and who wish to use them here in the Kingdom and not have them infringed upon. I have heard anecdotally that multiple different websites that were providing things like streaming services etc. here in the Kingdom have been shut down relatively quickly in fact and in fact a lot of those sites that in the past could sort of you know they would be shut down eventually but they could kind of, for lack of a better term, operate in the gap if you will, due to the prolonged period of time it took for the Courts to take action here in the Kingdom.  Now it's a matter of days that those go ahead and get shut down. So as a practical matter I think you know streaming activities especially of the illegal or illicit kind are probably going to be substantially curtailed as a result of this change in the legal posture relating to copyrights.  

The  thing to take away from this video for those who are looking to invest in the Kingdom and maintain a rather you know substantial portfolio with respect to intellectual property is I think that the current Administration is very serious about enforcement of intellectual property rights laws and having a practical impact to the benefit of the intellectual property holder, whereas in the past, okay the laws were there and yes after a prolonged period of time some level of enforcement could be undertaken, whereas now there is, to the best of my understanding as a practical matter, there's going to be much more quicker enforcement apparatus and the alacrity by which these infringers are dealt with is going to be  substantially different than in the past.  

So again, those looking to invest here in the Kingdom, it is probably a good idea to take a look at these new developments especially where intellectual property is concerned, as I think that the officials concerned are becoming more aware of the need to go ahead and crack down on this stuff, because it can have a detrimental impact to the overall economy by not having a regime in place that goes ahead and deals with these issues quickly and sufficiently so as to rectify the situation with the copyright holder.