Slashdot Mirror
Philippines' Cybercrime Law Makes SOPA Look Reasonable
silentbrad writes with this report from Forbes: "The dark days of SOPA and PIPA are behind the U.S., at least temporarily, as copyright tycoons reground and restrategize, attempting to come up with measures that don't cause the entire internet to shut down in protest. But one country has already moved ahead with similar legislation. The government of the Philippines has passed the Cybercrime Prevention Act, which on the surface, as usual, sounds perfectly well-intentioned. But when you read the actual contents of what's been deemed 'cybercrime,' SOPA's proposed censorship sounds downright lax by comparison. Yes, there's the usual hacking, cracking, identity theft and spamming, which most of us can agree should be illegal. But there's also cybersex, pornography, file-sharing (SOPA's main target), and the most controversial provision, online libel." At least it doesn't mention blasphemy.
holy shit! pass the eye bleach.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Porn is a bit of a cottage industry in the Philippines. Whether its women in Kananga trying to get married to foreigners for a few years until they leave after they have their "visa", camgirls, bargirls, gogo girls, they'll sell what they have. Endemic poverty combined with a national inability to root out corruption has made the Philippines the brothel of asia.
This law is probably aimed at the spate of "foreigners" who have been arrested lately for running camgirl shops in the hinterlands (ie they forgot or didn't know they had to pay off the authorities first), but everyone else has tacked on their own rider of course.
Truth be told I haven't much pity for them though. They are a fervently Catholic nation, despite being struck by massive natural disasters on an almost quarterly basis and living in "hammering tin cans into roofing material" poverty, so they hang by their own hypocrisy. Where is your god now.