Cybercrime law in the Philippines: What's the howl?
By socballais
@socballais (71)
Philippines
October 2, 2012 7:22pm CST
The Philippine Cybercrime Law or R.A. 10175 takes effect today, October 3, 2012. The law defines Cybercrime, providing for the prevention, investigation, suppression and the imposition of penalties. Netizens protested on various social networking sites and defaced government websites. They argued that the law curtails the freedom of expression.
The law applies to both foreigners and FIlipino nationals. So the law affects everybody.
As a blogger, what is your reaction?
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4 responses
@socballais (71)
• Philippines
3 Oct 12
Yes. That portion of the law was controversial. More than five petitions were files at the Supreme Court for the purpose of nullifying the law.
1 person likes this
@kenshin2143 (1880)
• Philippines
3 Oct 12
Can you elaborate it further? I think this law is not that familiar to most Filipinos? and what is the cause of the penalty you are talking about?
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@socballais (71)
• Philippines
3 Oct 12
Kenshin2143, it's the talk of the town for the past days. You can access the law at http://www.gov.ph/2012/09/12/republic-act-no-10175/.
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@JohnRok1 (2051)
•
3 Oct 12
No, I'm referring to obsessive individuals in the Philippines who made a practice of deliberately writing viruses and releasing them "into the wild", without caring what the consequences would be. They were featured in a newspaper article in this country with the comment that there's no way we could get at these people. I think it was some time before the Philippines government even thought of taking some action against them.
@socballais (71)
• Philippines
5 Oct 12
Yes. The very purpose of the cybercrime law is to ensure that those people gets punished. With the cybercrime law, the long arm of the law will be after them. Hackers will have no place this time on the Internet.
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@socballais (71)
• Philippines
3 Oct 12
Maybe you are referring to the love bug virus created by a student of the AMA in the Philippines. Yes it happened but charges were filed. E-commerce law was not yet passed by congress that time. It was this event that the Philippine Congress understood the essence of creating an IT law. That law was insufficient to prosecute hackers and online bloggers that is why the Cybercrime law was passed.
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@shelds_just (1)
• Philippines
5 Oct 12
The Philippines has been criticized a number of times for not being able to formulate laws to anticipate future bad incidents. However, this law is again not one of those that can hinder future events that may be contrary to it since there have been occurrences already while this RA on Cybercrime was not existent yet. Nevertheless, such will not be useless because information technology in the Philippines is still on its peak, if not about to reach its height, hence there will be several incidents that might occur in the future which are in contrary to it, but these will not go unpunished since this law is already in effect.
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