MTRCB wants to regulate Netflix

MANILA, Philippines — The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) wants to regulate the content of Netflix and other online streaming services to ensure their compliance with Philippine laws.

Jonathan Presquito, MTRCB legal affairs division chief, said even in South Korea, Netflix content is reviewed to ensure it is age-appropriate and contains no prohibited material.

“Netflix are media-on-demand platform and we have to regulate those platforms, we have to be sure that materials being shown on those platforms are in compliance with the MTRCB law,” said Presquito at a virtual public hearing yesterday by the Senate committee on trade, commerce and entrepreneurship.

“There is a necessity for us to proceed with the regulation, especially during the lockdown. Most of us, our sanity was maintained with streaming services like Netflix. The regulation will ensure three things, age-appropriate, no prohibited content and the movies or series were released with authority,” he noted.

As early as 2018, Presquito said the MTRCB has been already engaged with its counterpart in different regions as well as with different stakeholders regarding the regulation of motion picture content distributed through Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other video-on-demand platforms.

At present, Presquito said it’s difficult to resolve the matter since Netflix and the others could claim they are not physically doing business in the Philippines. Under the law governing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), however, they are doing business here.

“Definitely they are doing business, subscribers coming from and based in the Philippines and watching from the Philippines,” committee chairman Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III said.

Sen. Imee Marcos recommended that the issue of digital media be discussed.

“All over the world, everyone has problems on online streaming and as we are on lockdown during the pandemic, the reality is the creatives are even getting more creative putting pirated and legal materials online,” Marcos said.