While this week the Supreme Court has resumed talks on the controversial Cybercrime law, I do think there is a real need to talk about why this bill, as much as it will help prevent crimes committed by the use of the internet, is also a law that promotes “E-martial law.”
*If you want to get updated on what happened during the oral arguments, this article will help you get a grasp of what is happening, including the protests.
But before I am going to talk about the Cybercrime law, I do feel sad with the justice system of America following the suicide of Reddit editor Aaron Swartz after being accused of stealing thousands of academic papers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he said he would like to publish publicly for everyone’s benefit.
If you would think about it, Swartz’ intentions are good as he promotes people’s right to information. Sadly, this is not what the justice system of America thinks. Sadly speaking, America thinks that Swartz’ alleged stealing of information for the public to freely use it is a crime, compared to what greedy corporate bigwigs such as Bernard Madoff did back in 2008 that led to the Financial crisis. Quoting from the Huffington Post article Will Bunch wrote,
On one level, this might be a time for Americans to ask ourselves why the full hammer of the government was coming down on this brilliant young activist whose alleged crime was so dubious, when the same Justice Department has all but ignored the double-dealing and financial chicanery that crashed the world economy that erased billions of dollars in 2008, and it has completely looked the other way when it comes to the torture practices that reversed decades of established law and which have been so harmful to America’s reputation.
To be honest, the issue of freedom of information being a crime is not limited to America alone. Even in the Philippines, it is an issue as well. While I do applaud Pres. Noynoy Aquino for certifying the also-controversial Reproductive Health Bill as urgent, I do feel sad when the government thinks that the Freedom of Information bill, another bill of heated debate, is not certified to be urgent.
And here we have this Cybercrime law, which is under the first set of oral arguments as of this writing, that has dangerous clauses such as the online libel and takedown clauses, dangerous parts of the law that will bring us back to martial law.
As much as the Cybercrime law has, to an extent, good intentions of protecting us from frauds, scams, and the like, the law is not perfect especially when it has intentions of shutting down internet freedom a la China.
While the team of Atty. Harry Roque go to court to contest these dangerous provisions of the Cybercrime law, the justices, on the other hand, did made some points on the provisions being contested with the Cybercrime law.
One of these is on the libel clause, with the citation of the cyberbullying suffered by (now) Atty. Christopher Lao, who rose to infamy when he drove his car through flooded waters, and was defamed by various people through various social media channels (remember that there was a Facebook page calling him stupid).
In relation to cyberbullying, I do agree with Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno when she said that there is the need for the State to protect the interests of individuals, as cyberbullying can lead to suicides (and it is no joke . . . it IS a problem with most teenagers these days).
So am I saying that Sen. Tito Sotto’s allegation that he is being cyberbullied be an acceptable case similar to Lao’s case? Hold your horses; the case with Sotto is totally different, and I do not think he is being cyberbullied – he did a lot of wrong things, and one of them is plagiarism.
I do agree that as much as the #notoCybercrimeLaw legal panel did their best in presenting their protest against certain clauses of the law, the justices, on the other hand, did provide some interesting questions.
While the arguments is ongoing, I do pray that the law be given an extended TRO, especially since the TRO issued for this law ends on February 6. I just hope that with all the arguments being done, the Supreme Court could be convinced at how the Cybercrime law is unconstitutional in terms of violating internet freedom.
Random Thoughts and Musings. 