Philippine Daily Inquirer
1:09 am | Thursday, September 20th, 2012
The new Cybercrime Prevention Act, signed into law by President Aquino on Sept. 12, takes the dangerously outmoded provisions on libel in the Revised Penal Code—and dumps them online. Without any legislative debate, without any public hearing, indeed with hardly anyone looking, these libel provisions have been unthinkingly extended to all online content. While the extension itself is only a small part of the new law, it now threatens every citizen who has access to a computer device with unconscionable restrictions on our hard-earned right to free speech.
We believe the new provision is deeply, radically, unconstitutional.
Coupled with the continuing inaction of the Aquino administration and its coalition allies in Congress on the long-sought, much-promised Freedom of Information Act, the new law makes us question the depth of the administration’s commitment to free speech, a free press and the free exchange of information.
It is possible that the Aquino administration and its partners in Congress were merely asleep at the switch, and did not realize the true implications of the extension. The sequence of events, as first pieced together by blogger and South China Morning Post correspondent Raissa Robles, certainly suggests that the introduction of the inserted passage, by Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III, was hurried and did not benefit from in-depth discussion. The law’s major sponsor, Sen. Edgardo Angara, merely acquiesced to Sotto’s proposal to extend the reach of the existing libel provisions to cyberspace.
Whatever the case, the burden of responsibility—and it is a heavy one, with historical consequences—remains with the legislators who voted for the new law, and with the President who enacted it.
The language of the extension seems innocuous enough. We find it under Chapter II, “Punishable Acts,” together with other “Content-related Offenses,” namely cybersex, child pornography and unsolicited commercial communications or spam.
Under Section 4, subsection C, paragraph 4, we read: “Libel.—The unlawful or prohibited acts of libel as defined in Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended, committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future.”
And that’s it. There’s nothing else, no distinctions made, no qualifications offered. When we said “unthinking,” we meant our legislators did not think the matter through.
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These are today's Suertres/Swertres Lotto tips; Yesterday's results are at the bottom
066
124**
245**
024**
469
489
049
249**
479*
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128**
122**
125**
148
Yesterday's Philippine PCSO Draw Results
For September 19, 2012 Wednesday
EZ2 Lotto
Morning 11am: 08-09
Afternoon 4pm: 03-23
Evening 9pm: 26-26
Winning numbers in exact order
Php 4,000.00 per 10 peso play
Suertres Lotto Luzon Vis-Min
Morning 11:00 am: 1-2-2
Afternoon 4:00 pm: 4-3-2
Evening 9:00 pm: 2-0-9
Winning numbers in exact order
Php: 4,500 per 10 peso play
4Digit Luzon & Vismin
9pm: 5-7-5-0
Winning numbers in exact order
Mega 6/45 National Lottery
01-42-10-31-03-12
Current Jackpot: Php 18,872,706.60
(0)winner
Winning numbers in any order
Grand 6/55 Lotto
43-36-22-40-31-25
Current Jackpot: P30,000,000.00
(0)winner
Winning numbers in any order
* = Hot Numbers
** = Very Hot Numbers
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