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.'"

Comments

I can't join the free speech religion.

[concealment]

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.

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[ohnocitizen]

Cybersex IS speech, and porn is art (however far from fine art it is). When you consider how very central sexuality and control of sexuality has been to the political process across the globe, it doesn't make any sense to attempt to cast them as otherwise.

The thing about free speech is, we don't need proof it leads to a better way of life. That's a strict standard to apply to sexuality and communication. Maybe some speech (speech being expression) society does find distasteful as a whole. Is that a reason to ban it? Is that a reason to insist it isn't even expression?

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[matthiasvegh]

If a government (or any other body) can disable sites/remove content at will for _any_ justification without due process, the same can be done for content that was not originally covered by the law. i.e.: political site, shut it down because it had porn on it. (regardless of whether or not there actually was any on the site). The problem with bans against subsets of speech is not that the actual subsets are considered to be valuable, but because the vagueness of what is considered pornographic means lawyers can just slap it on to anything.

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

(_i_)

That's ASCII art of a woman bending over.

Shut down Slashdot immediately.

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We have 'zero proof' that building legal and technical mechanisms suitable for the suppression of a given flavor of content leads to the use of those mechanisms being used for the suppression of other flavors, sometimes including your 'actual speech' category? Srsly?

Mission creep is a well known phenomenon, and it's both easily historically observable that people's descriptions of political and social commentary they don't like frequently ends up tinged with the same vocabulary of condemnation as that used for porn('that's obscene' actually means that that includes some sordid fucking surprisingly infrequently).

On the architectural side, technical and legal mechanisms for efficient content takedowns are virtually content-agnostic. Blacklists, wordlist filters, DMCA takedown forms, any of those can be trivially re-targeted just by dropping some new parameters in to the configuration.

Lest this be dismissed as theoretical, observe the Russian experiment.

As for the babble about 'meaning' and 'the sacred', I'm just going to have to admit complete bafflement about what you are talking about.

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn isn't speech, bit torrent downloads aren't speech, and cybersex isn't speech.

You're a fucking idiot.

The courts (assuming you're talking about America) have repeatedly upheld porn as protected speech.

We have no proof that legal porn/cybersex leads to a better way of life.

The test for free speech isn't a better way of life, but it's intended to prevent assholes like you from telling other people what they can and can't do.

It's very much about the ego and not at all about the sacred

Fuck the sacred, fuck your god, fuck Allah, fuck Buddha, fuck Jesus, fuck Mohammed, fuck Cthulu, fuck the Flying Spaghetti Monster, fuck all of them if it means douchebags like you think you get to control what other people do.

Go beat your wife or rape your kids or whatever you idiots do.

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Nothing particularly requires that 'performance art' only include things that are legal and/or unobjectionable. However, punishing people for doing things that are illegal for other reasons during the course of producing 'art' is not generally considered to be a restriction on freedom of speech, any more than the illegality of sacrificing babies to satan is considered an infringement on religious freedom...

There are some edge cases that get tricky(mostly on the side of people totally incidentally banning things that are required for speech or religions they don't like); but it isn't a terribly difficult conceptual distinction. Banning a speech act as such is a clear infringement of speech rights; but that doesn't confer any immunity from any other relevant laws on the speaker, should their speech involve breaching them.

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[gstoddart]

Ahhh .... I'll know it when I see it.

Fortunately, case law has established the criteria for what can't qualify:

The Miller case established what came to be known as the Miller Standard, which clearly articulated that three criteria must be met for a work to be legitimately subject to state regulations. The Court recognized the inherent risk in legislating what constitutes obscenity, and necessarily limited the scope of the criteria. The criteria were:
1) The average person, applying local community standards, looking at the work in its entirety, appeals to the prurient interest.
2) The work must describe or depict, in an obviously offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions.
3) The work as a whole must lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific values".

So you'd need to prove that those two people doing it in front of a camera is all of the above, and some of those are very subjective.

The problem with deciding one kind of 'speech' is free and one isn't is sooner or later someone comes to arrest you for suggesting that Geroge Bush resembled a monkey.

You can't be for free speech but then decide there's parts of it you wish would go away -- I defend the right of someone to take a shit on a sheet and call it art. I don't get it, and I'm not interested in it, but I'm not going to appoint myself or anybody else to be the arbiter of what we should and shouldn't say. And you have to be prepared to take the good with the bad, or you're setting yourself up for a situation in which one group or another gets to define 'art', 'obscene', and things you're allowed to say.

Which is why the loons from Westboro Church are still around.

Re:I can't join the free speech religion.

[farble1670]

We can survive just fine without them.

if you are going to start listing things we have and can buy that aren't required for survival, it's going to be a long list.

We have no proof that legal porn/cybersex leads to a better way of life.

do you have proof that washing dishes leads to a better way of life? how about digging ditches? do you have proof that cybersex leads to a worse way of life?

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."

sex is a natural thing. cybersex may seem perverted to some but i'd have to think that it results is less problems than engaging in real sex. there are no STDs, no rape, and so on. the party providing the cybersex is being compensated for their time. as long as they are not being forced to work, i can't see the problem.

Well intentioned but poorly implemented

[erp_consultant]

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.

Re:Well intentioned but poorly implemented

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If their motives were so pure, they might have considered passing a law to deal with kiddy porn and child rape(which would now be in effect) rather than tying action on that issue to successfully ramming through a variety of much more dangerous and ill-considered changes(because of which they now don't have any progress on the issue).

Tackling serious issues is a good thing; but tying them to getting your way on much more controversial(or simply frivolous) issues is about as overt a sign of bad faith as you can exhibit...

Too bad

[Mike Frett]

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.

Re:Too bad

[It's the tripnaut!]

Anyway, this Bill, however bad it may be; would have helped put a stop to this.


At the cost of putting a stop to free speech. Under this law, every negative comment online (e.g. twitter, facebook) can be loosely interpreted as slander by an aggrieved party.

Re:Too bad

[Fulminata]

Most of the sex cam sites house nothing but women trying to make a living. Some of them do indeed claim more hardship than they actually have in order to entice western men to send them even more money than they already paid for the sex show (usually around $1 a minute, of which the women get 25 to 50 cents at most).

Western men who get "scammed" this way are usually out a couple hundred bucks at the very most. Women legitimately looking for a husband who get scammed by western men just looking for sex often find themselves having lost their virginity in a Catholic country where that is still incredibly important.

The alternative to sex cam sites for these women is often actual prostitution. A far more dangerous occupation. It's telling that the penalties under this law were an order of magnitude higher for sex cam work than they are for prostitution. Makes you wonder what the real agenda for the law's backers was?

"sometimes they want shows in Skype, you pay by Paypal etc but the show you get will not be what you paid for"

Really? Let me guess, you paid for the girl to have sex with her underage sister, and all she did was show you her tits? Cry me a river. Most of these women are from the poorest families in a poor country. Making their quota on cam can determine whether or not they eat that day. If you're so worried about getting your money's worth, then just stick to the main sites rather than setting up private shows on Skype.

I'd like to see these women have better alternatives to working the cam sites, not forced to go into even more degrading work because the law created outrageous penalties.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[Spectre]

Compensation. Not necessarily money, but something-done-for-something-gained type of exchange.

They are trying to ban situations like: "You can live here rent free, but you will need to do a perform in my webcam shows on Friday evenings".
The performance is being done for the favor of living in the spare room (which is a "valuable consideration" in legal terms ... something with a non-zero financial consequence).

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, not familiar with law in the Philippines. Do not consider the comments herein as legal advice.

Re:Is there a lawyer in the house?

[mark-t]

Yeah.... IMO, it would help immensely if the preview and submit buttons weren't immediately beside eachother. I've accidentally hit submit when I meant preview so many times I've lost count.

what is art?

[girlinatrainingbra]

re: is no more "art" than me sitting at my computer typing ...
.
counter-evidence: Andy Warhol and his "movies": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol_filmography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Factory#Films