Philippine Cybercrime Law Put On Indefinite Hold 70
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.'"
Re:I can't join the free speech religion. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [economist.com].
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. (Score:2, Informative)
Two people doing it in front of a camera is no more "art" than me sitting at my computer typing ... in front of a camera is "art". We need to redefine what "art" is in the age of ubiquitous cameras.
I can see it now, the Sherrif's officers who beat Rodney King ... "Performance Art" ... because it was done on camera!
Re:I can't join the free speech religion. (Score:4, Informative)
Ahhh .... I'll know it when I see it [wikipedia.org].
Fortunately, case law has established the criteria for what can't qualify:
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 [about.com].
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.
what is art? (Score:4, Informative)
.
counter-evidence: Andy Warhol and his "movies":
Re:Too bad (Score:3, Informative)
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.