Sunday, September 30, 2012

Philippine Cybercrime Law Is A FLaw

First a quote:
 
"The cybercrime law needs to be repealed or replaced. It violates Filipinos’ rights to free expression and it is wholly incompatible with the Philippine government’s obligations under international law."

This comes from Brad Adams, Asian director of Human Rights Watch.
I could not agree more. And yes, a lot of netizens are outraged by this R.A. 101.75 DZRW, which we consider as a Medieval Law for Medieval times, and shoot the Philippines back into the dictatorial Ice Age, where you could land in jail for 12 years, pay a one time only fee of only Php 1 million to get your freedom back for just criticizing an entity like the infamous Honorable Infringer. And this comes free without any court order or warrant.

Boy, am I in deep sheet. I retweet, I “LIKE” on facebook, I rant. I make it a point that we all make booboos in our life, and this LAW is a definite BIG BANG BO0OBO0O in double capitals. It is a grand WTF A-HOLE LAW that is wholly incompatible with our guaranteed rights to free speech, right to express ourselves, and write our expression on any media, including social network sites, and yes as a blog entry like this one here.

Now, now, I know my rights and the consequence of violating this law. But does that 12 year old girl next to you in that net café knows this? Does your 78 year old Grandma (who puts his age in FB as 24 year old) know this?

This law is the beginning of censorship. This law is just conjured by lawmakers to protect their reputation or what remains of it, or absence of it, from the dumb netizens who rants and raves about their wrongdoing.

Funny thing is libel is a one-sided argument. Who sues for libel, the rich and and famous and prominent, right? I for one thing could not sue a senator for libel, I ain’t got no money to do so. While them rich and famous and prominent got this hypersensitive reaction to criticism and with blind rage call upon this FLaw to punish you.

More from Mr. Adams…

“Anybody using popular social networks or who publishes online is now at risk of a long prison term should a reader – including government officials – bring a libel charge,Allegedly libelous speech, online or offline, should be handled as a private civil matter, not a crime.”

Agree… and here’s an analogy,

Aling Kikay sells vegetables in the market, a few steps away from her is Aling Tisay who is a chicken vendor. Aling Tisay sells about 40 whole chickens a day (because she is Tisay and beautiful, men buys her chickens), but at about a week ago she was only selling about ten, even if she dances still 10 chickens or less. She wonder why. Later she found out that Aling Kikay was telling every one that Aling Tisay is selling Double-Dead Chicken™.

A confrontation ensues, then it went wild, there was hair pulling and face wolverining. A Sirius Vegetarian versus a Carcass Eater. Place your bets. But then the Barangay Patrol arrived and pacified the two. An investigation.Then a compromise. Aling Tisay will pardon Aling Kikay if she would help her sell Chicken and announce everyday that she is sorry and that she just made up her claim on Double-Dead Chicken™. This will go on for 10 days as Aling Tisay’s condition. They’ve agreed.

For ten days Aling Kikay is now selling vegetables and chicken (no profit from the chickens, ok.). Ten days passed, she is still selling chickens. I wonder why? Somebody found out later that they become strange bedfellows and announced their engagement. In the future they will marry each other pending their request for a law on same-sex marriage.

End of analogy.

Now to all those people who are just itching and itching to get at somebody through the application of this law. Could you not take criticism constructively? This is a way of improving your relationship to your detractors. This is a way to make you more like-able on facebook. They will be saying “this senator is such a sport, although I criticized him, he comes up to me and we became friends. I will definitely vote for this guy.”

A year ago, in the US, many website blackened their pages in protest for an almost the same predicament as the Philippines named SOPA. I won’t go on telling you about this, just google it up, kids. I kinda like what them protesters did. And I kinda have to ask Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, Yahoo, Bing, Tumblr and the others to do the same for the netizen of the Philippines. And I kinda want them also to block those account of those people involved with this law. And I kinda want this to happen on October 3, 2012. I kinda like the date, it kinda is the date for the FLAW to take effect. And I kinda want it for the whole day.

SOPA-Blackout-Success-1-537x326

SOPA-Blackout

Did you catch my drift?

Read more about the Human Rights Watch article on defamation and libel with the link below.
Turning Critics into Criminals

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...excellent,express as many as you can..it is our right and our freedom to let everybody know what you feel...NO TO CYBER CRIME..