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Philippine Cybercrime Law Put On Indefinite Hold
An anonymous reader writes "The Supreme Court of the Philippines has put an indefinite hold on a controversial law that would, among other things, ban cybersex and porn. A host of groups, particularly journalists, had resoundingly criticized the law, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, as broad and out of touch with how the Internet works. The Philippines' National Union of Journalists, for example, called its definition of libel 'a threat not only against the media and other communicators but anyone in the general public who has access to a computer and the Internet.'"
Porn isn't speech, bit torrent downloads aren't speech, and cybersex isn't speech.
Speech was originally intended to protect political and social commentary. That is of value to society. Porn, piracy and cybersex are not. We can survive just fine without them.
I realize this is an unpopular opinion on the internet, because (a) the internet has a daytime TV audience since September 1996 and (b) people like to believe their lives have meaning when they're crusading for "freedom" of some kind, even though they're just pushing out bytes on a screen on social media sites.
However, I think we need to stop worrying about what they do in other countries. We have no proof that legal porn/cybersex leads to a better way of life. We also have zero proof that banning it leads to banning of actual speech, i.e. political/social commentary.
Unfortunately these debates always become so emotional that soon it's children screaming at anyone who endorses anything but "do whatever you want, wherever and whenever, without consequences."
It's like a religion, but not an interesting or creative one. It's very much about the ego and not at all about the sacred. The sacred might emphasize a purpose in life beyond freedom/porn/cybersex, and it seems most people fear that, even if in non-religious form.
The Supreme Court of the Philippines has put an indefinite hold on a controversial law that would, among other things, ban cybersex and porn.
Lots of money in "cybersex and porn" in the Philippines...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
What does ''... for favor or consideration" mean, exactly?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Philippines apparently has a huge problem with child pornography. Dirt bags the world over go there to take advantage of young children from mostly very poor families. The government tried to pass a law to punish those producing and consuming child pornography but went a little too far with some of the broad definitions they put in place. One of those definitions was around "slander". Personally I think the government was going in the right direction just too far on the slander bit. Hopefully they can come up with something that is stiff tough but more fair to the general population.
Anyone who knows, most of the sex cam sites house nothing but scammers from the Philippines. I use to investigate this, there have been too many people foolish enough to send money (mostly to Filipino transsexuals) to these people. 9/10 are there for the sole purpose of telling you their Mom, Dad etc are Ill and in need of money.
It's mostly lonely men that fall for this and begin so called 'long-distance' relationships that involve monthly 'help' in the form of money. Not always, but sometimes it ends with money for travel to your country to meet you; incidentally, they never show and are normally not seen again. Russia, as of 2012 was the #1 Scam country with the Philippines riding close behind.
Some of you probably know all about this and have been a victim. There are sites popping up all the time that have support forums for victims scammed by Filipinos. I myself am knee deep in documents and files from both Scammers and Victims. If it's any help, you can find them at many popular cam sites, there are several ways they scam, sometimes they want shows in Skype, you pay by Paypal etc but the show you get will not be what you paid for, and/or they will disappear. Other times it's the fake Boyfriend scam, you think you are in a relationship, but you are the 'Bank' for them and their Filipino counterpart.
You get the Idea. Anyway, this Bill, however bad it may be; would have helped put a stop to this. Scammers win.
When your masters want to bring in draconian laws, they have their people draw up even MORE outrageous proposals which they present to parliament. When the expected backlash occurs, they "think again" and introduce the original draconian legislation they wanted in the first place. WORSE, by doing so they also say "see, this proves we listen to what the people want".
BTW- the Philippines are, to all intent and purposes, a colony of the USA, and these proposed attacks on Internet freedoms were drafted by Americans in the employ of the US government. What team Obama could never get passed the Houses of Congress or the US public, they instead impose on the people of 'lesser' servile nations. The idea is to use these regimes as 'examples' of ideal Internet regulation later on, when future attempts are made to clamp down in the USA.
re: is no more "art" than me sitting at my computer typing ...
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counter-evidence: Andy Warhol and his "movies": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol_filmography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Factory#Films
re : (_i_) /. immediately. ;>)
That's ASCII art of a woman bending over.
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No, that was a very well encoded and compressed version of Scientology's inner doctrine about the ascent into being an Operating Thetan, and all about Xenu. Shut down
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different decryption yields danger, will robinson!
Slashdot is not a community opposed to pornography. Be honest: A lot of you enjoy it. I'll freely admit myself to frequently engaging in sexual roleplay online. It's a lot of fun. Because of this though, a lot of us have no understanding of the other side of the debate. All we see is a caricature screaming 'sex is evil!' I don't know anything about the philippines, but in the interests of fairness, here is the official stance of one of the leading American anti-pornography organisations:
"Pornography has spread like a plague in our nation. It has moved from the margins of our culture to the mainstream, attacking marriages, families, and communities. Worst of all, it has stolen a time of innocence from our children. ... Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual's concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability. ... Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters. Among couples affected by one spouse's addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse. Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity. Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs. These, in turn, lead to still more weaknesses and debilities. Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution. he presence of sexually oriented businesses significantly harms the surrounding community, leading to increases in crime and decreases in property values."
On second thoughts... no, the caricature is about right. I was hoping to find some more depth on their site to quote so that slashdot could pick apart their arguments, but they don't really have any. Just scaremongering. I especially like how they claim in one part that pornography ruins marriages by making men not want sex, and in another part that it claims that pornography makes men have more casual sex leading to STIs and out-of-wedlock births. Then they have to drag out talk of child pornography, the atomic bomb of debate. So go ahead, make fun of them. They deserve it.
I'm going to look at porn now.
There's some morality stuff going on here. If you've ever been here you'll know that movies are re-edited and sanitised, swearing is censored and all that. Which is amazingly weird since the females are generally quite hot... This will be mostly political. You can go to prison here for "offending the church" etc.
Some interesting responses in this thread. 18 of them. I don't know if I can reply to all of them or even many.
What's the reasoning behind this? Cybersex is people typing words, but that doesn't make it speech for the purposes of free speech. Neither is there any reason to support that porn is "art." Porn is a product like a Big Mac, except instead of sugared bread and soya-meat there's dongs.
Here's more assumptions with no logic behind them.
Control of sexuality and free speech are both contingent upon their effects, like all other policy choices.
If you're going to make a deontological argument, you're going to have to argue for some moral superiority of these things, which in an atheistic pluralism has no inherency.
That leaves you with arguing for their utility, and I await your doing that.
I think art is that which has artistic intent and artistic effect.
Porn is more like a product, in that it's roughly fungible and is consumed without particular regard for message, only a vague notion of "quality."
It communicates nothing.
True; Satanism is not banned, but occult sacrifice of babies is because it's murder (unless they're still in the womb, in which case it's Satanic ritual abortion, which sounds like it would really upset someone). I think the question of speech however is a question of what speech adds to society. Does it contribute new information? Or is it for the purposes of self-gratification and/or profit? If it's the former, I support defending it, because no matter how unpopular it is, we need to hear it. If it's the latter, well, who really cares?
And yet:
You are defining art.
You have precluded anyone in this society from raising the standard of art above "anything goes," and initiating the kind of artistic revival movement that happened centuries ago.
"Anything goes" is as limiting as any other definition of art. It's just more permissive, which basically drowns the art world in junk and excludes quality, as history shows us.
What political speech do you think is going to be categorized as pornography? Even in very conservative jurisdictions in the past, such decisions have been overthrown (I'm thinking of the Ulysses and Naked Lunch cases).
You have made a comparison, but not shown a continuity. This is an implementation of slippery slope that most would consider a fallacy.
They use the same language to describe anything they don't like or find disgusting. It does not mean the same mechanism will be applied.
In other words, it enhances quality where permissiveness increases quantity. Great definition; thanks for adding it.
You're telling me what I can and can't do.
According to you, I can't live in a society with any standards.
Thus I'm doomed to ride the river of mediocrity into Idiocracy with fools like yourself who can't tell the difference.
I was wondering if someone would walk into this one.
What evidence do you have that free speech and permissiveness are not available resources being used to maintain power?
Ah.