LOS ANGELES — Filipinos who libel others on Facebook, Twitter
or elsewhere online could be jailed for up to 12 years under a law that
went into effect last week in the Philippines.
The new law against cybercrime includes a disputed provision that
imposes much steeper penalties for committing libel on the Internet than
offline. It allows police to shut down websites and do some monitoring
of email and online activity without a warrant.
Fears of an increasing government grip on online speech triggered an
uproar among Filipinos, who have been dubbed some of the most avid users
of social media in the world. Rights groups warned that existing libel
laws are already vague enough for criticism of the government to be
deemed criminal.
"The Philippines was considered a regional leader in Internet
freedom," said Sanja Kelly of the international rights group Freedom
House. "This law puts it closer to more authoritarian states."
Even clicking "like" on an offending Facebook post could be construed
as libel under the broadly written law, the rights group warned.
Internet freedom groups, journalists and bloggers in the Philippines
blacked out their websites Wednesday in protest, calling the new law an
unconstitutional trampling of free-speech rights. Some took to the
streets to protest. Several petitions have been filed with the Supreme
Court challenging the law.
"Libel has been decriminalized in other civilized jurisdictions. Our
legislature, instead, will throw us back to the Dark Ages by imposing a
higher penalty for libel," Ateneo de Manila University constitutionalist
Joaquin Bernas wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Bernas and other critics compared the new penalties to the imposition
of martial law under President Ferdinand Marcos. "So this is how 1972
felt like," Manila journalist Jojo Pasion Malig said on Twitter. "The
only different thing is 'Gangnam Style' playing in the background."
Several government websites went down Wednesday, apparently under attack by hackers.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda sought to tamp down the furor
over the new law, saying at a televised news conference that "people are
spreading the fear of this law, but people should also remember the
power of the constitution, the rights that it guarantees."
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said her department had recommended
the law be sheared of the disputed rules cracking down on
cyberdefamation, cyberthreats and Internet libel.
The first day the law was in effect, Wednesday, some politicians who
supported it were already saying it should be amended. Its author, Sen.
Edgardo Angara, said he would revisit the higher penalties imposed under
the law for online libel, though he argued there needed to be some
penalty for such speech.
Is cyberspace "a zone of impunity that you can now begin to lambaste
maliciously your enemies without fear of any sanction at all?" Angara
asked ABS-CBN News when asked to respond to the criticism.
Though the cybercrimes act has quickly become tagged as "the libel
law," many other parts of the law have not been controversial, including
new rules to quash child pornography and identity theft.
Los Angeles Times
