An international symposium on copyright enforcement in the digital environment opened in Hanoi on June 17, attracting delegates from 15 countries and territories in Southeast Asia, Africa, Arab, and Latin America, and leading experts from international organisations.

An international symposium on copyright enforcement in the digital environment opened in Hanoi on June 17, attracting delegates from 15 countries and territories in Southeast Asia, Africa, Arab, and Latin America, and leading experts from international organisations.

Jointly organised by the ministries of culture, sports and tourism of Vietnam and the Republic of Korea, and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the event provides updates on copyright protection and enforcement, particularly in the digital environment in each country and region. It also offers a platform to share policymaking trends, technological solutions to the infringement of copyright and related rights in the digital environment, and experiences and measures to foster cooperation in this field.

In his opening remarks, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Ho An Phong said creativity in the digital environment has opened up many opportunities, providing new creative tools, and enabling a new storage environment, distribution methods, and ways for using works, performances, sound and video recordings, and broadcasts.

Digital content creation is considered a new and highly potential field for businesses, content producers, organisations, individuals, and brands worldwide, but also poses a challenge of copyright protection to each digital content product globally, not just in Vietnam, he said, stressing that this requires close cooperation among countries, international organisations, as well as copyright holders.

Treaties of WIPO such as the Copyright Treaty, the Performances and Phonograms Treaty, and the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances have formed a system of important legal tools to address copyright issues in the digital environment, he said.

Vietnam officially became a member of the Copyright Treaty and the Performances and Phonograms Treaty in 2022, thereby meeting commitments in the new-generation free trade agreements and establishing a useful legal foundation for protecting works and copyright transparently and effectively, especially in the digital space.

It is considering participation in the Beijing Treaty and actively taking part in meetings of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights to contribute to the draft international legal documents on copyright within the WIPO framework, Phong went on.

He said the country is developing cultural industries. The main objectives, tasks, and solutions to enhance the management and enforcement of copyright protection and develop cultural industries have been identified in the intellectual property and cultural development strategies by 2030.

Attention has also been paid to promoting public awareness and compliance with copyright rules, contributing to copyright enforcement effectiveness and the development of cultural industries, the official noted.

The five-day event covers 34 topics, including copyright enforcement systems of countries, the values of copyright, and creative industries' contribution to economies. It also shares forms of online copyright infringements, threats related to the use of infringed-copyright content, international development in online copyright enforcement and management, jurisdiction and law applied to online copyright disputes, and methods of resolving online infringements./.