The Cybercrime Prevention Act: Separating Chaff from Grain
Note: I originally posted this article on my FB page last October 9, 2012. [Breaking News: As of this writing in a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court just issued a temporary restraining order against the implementation of the RA 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act in response to the 15 petitions filed questioning its constitutionality.] We need not throw the Cybercrime Prevention Act grain with the libel chaff. The grain, we eat. The chaff, we burn. (When I posted it on Twitter, Teddy Locsin Jr. [@teddyboylocsin] tweeted back, “Sunugin ang [Burn the] planter.”) If we are not careful, we might end up burning the grain and eating the chaff. The grain of the law would be penalizing, for example, identity theft, child pornography and spamming (that is, sending unsolicited commercial communications). The chaff would be the questionable provisions of the law such as imposing a harsher penalty on libel. In his “Cybercrime Act: Features and issues,” Atty. JJ Disini wrote