With malice toward none
When Congress was crafting the Philippine version of the Cybercrime
Law that a good number of countries had in place, the debatable issues were strangely and profoundly different from those intended and compelled by most cybercrime statutes the world over. It was not that the issues that we face in this country and at our stage of technological development in the digital age were any different.
Adjusting for technologies, there are commonalities. In fact, given the fantastic skills of our youth and information technology students in the field of artificial intelligence, robotics, digital communications and the like, considering the embarrassingly poor communications infrastructure and educational content offered, our tech-savvy youth actually have elevated themselves to a higher awesome pedestal.
Globally, the focal point of cybercrime statutes concerns such matters as identity theft, intellectual property rights, hacking, cloning, privacy issues, as well as data security, and computer viruses, malware, ransomware, Trojans and other similarly invasive digital bugs.
The examples of crimes addressed worldwide include the illegal transfer of funds, the theft of intellectual property, the cloning of credit cards, automatic teller machine cards, and the legal challenges between outsourced computer content and its principal owners.
From the very onset, our cybercrime laws seem to have focused on the right to free speech and expression, and the freedom of the press.
The conflict with the Constitution is immediately apparent. Among its first provisions are those that deal with basic human rights, and going into the details, among those protected are those that concern the freedom of speech and expression.
The prioritization is deliberate. All other laws from the Revised Penal Code (RPC), the provisions on libel and slander, undue vexation, all the way to the Cybercrime Law must follow.
The recent Philippine media experience with the law, while cognizant of libel as covered by the RPC passed in the Thirties had focused beyond the original provisions, which had a legal prescription of two years.
Involving basic libel where the original crime had been carried out in an online medium, the charge under cyberlibel laws involved a republication where the defense in questioning prescription also alluded to a mere correction of spelling rather than a republication of the original.
As the republication carrying the corrected letter in the misspelled word had effectively resurrected the original and had in fact made the republication available to an even wider public, the action had thus slid the prescription calendar forward. Thus, judgement was in favor of the appellant.
At its core was the difference in the treatment of libel against cyberlibel where issues focus on continuous republication, the ever-presence of libelous material, and an immeasurably vast audience as a function of the medium. Add the pretext of correcting a single word if only to resurrect an original
“Technology per se cannot be malicious. Absent malice, we end up with a charge based solely on a soulless, insipid medium and nothing else.
“Globally, the focal point of cybercrime statutes concerns such matters as identity theft, intellectual property rights, hacking, cloning, privacy issues.
accusation thus indicating malice, all these serve to appreciate the heavier penalties imposed under our cyberlibel law.
Analyze the foregoing. The difference lies in continuous publication as a function of the technological medium plus malice, which is a function of conscious editorial judgement. However, technology per se cannot be malicious. Absent malice, we end up with a charge based solely on a soulless, insipid medium and nothing else.