This is one of the few non-movie related blog posts that I'll be posting here. I feel that this issue is just way too important to not write about in this venue. Starting today, October 3rd, an unjust law is enacted in my country, the Philippines. The Anti-Cybercrime Law. At first, it's a fairly good law, since it aims to fight online fraud, human trafficking, child pornography, etc. But a duplicitous senator for reasons that's gonna be way too long to write about here, threw in at the last minute, to include LIBEL as one of the crimes punishable by this law. The way the law is written is very vague on its definition of what constitutes "libel" and imposes very heavy punishment and fines for people found guilty of this crime. Basically, the way the law is read, it could very well be used as a weapon by the government or by people of authority, wealth and power to go after anyone who writes anything bad about them and not only that, it also implicates anyone who ever shared, retweet or liked that "libelous" statement. Our country is supposed to be democracy where we freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The fact that we have this law that's causing us to tiptoe around what we say online is a violation of that freedom. As an artist, or at least an aspiring artist, and a writer, freedom of speech is an important cause for me so I have to say my piece. JUNK THE ANTI-CYBERCRIME LAW!
2 comments:
I'm with you on this post buddy, for them to include that libel law is ridiculous. Free speech should be a right everybody has and if punishing the people who first made the comment isn't bad enough punishing those who like or retweet it is simply insane, I seriously hope that that part of the document is dropped because like you say it's a load of nonsense!
Such a shame. It's always a pity when you see modern civilization take such horrible steps backwards like this.
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