The Philippine Online Chronicles

Senator Manny Villar has proposed an electronic libel bill (Senate Bill 2668), which seeks to amend Philippine law to cover libel on the Internet. It is far too easy to understand such reaction. And from a certain point of view, Mr. Villar is absolutely right. It is far too easy to defame someone on the Internet. On the other hand, Mr. Villar is also wrong and that this law will have severe impact on balancing civil liberties, with justice for a person.

Defamation is simply a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to someone’s reputation. The statement is published because of negligence or done so out of spite or malice. Libel is written defamation.

One must understand that defamation on the Internet is as old as the Internet itself, and we call people who do so, as “trolls.” A troll is someone who would post inflammatory or extraneous or off topic messages. The whole purpose of which is provoke another person into an emotional response.

I have myself been a victim of these trolls and defamation. Character attacks are far, far too easy on the Internet. All it takes really is for someone to make up things and publish them. All it really takes is to take these character attacks, be angered by it and counter attack yourself. The perception of anonymity for example gives strength to these trolls in launching their attacks.

One has to understand that the very nature of the medium, what makes the Internet so great, that ability to bring down barriers to publication and make it so easy for people to just write something up can also do harm.

And yet, an Electronic libel law is not the answer to solving this.

Philippine libel law is a criminal offense. Philippine libel law assumes that malice is present in every defamatory imputation.

In practice, it is often used as weapon by public figures to silence critics. It doesn’t matter if the case holds true or not in court, only that it results in making it difficult on the other person to get back at them.

It isn’t that there shouldn’t be a libel law, electronic or otherwise, but there should be a decriminalization of libel law to make it less of a weapon of public figures, and more really a weapon of justice.

Another thing missing with the Villar Bill is that it assumes Libel law in old media translates to the Internet. In Philippine law, an editor and a publication is as much responsible for defamation as the author of the publication itself.

So if someone wrote a comment in a Filipino website, then under the Villar law, then that publication is as much responsible for the poster. Facebook or Twitter would be as liable under Philippine law as if they themselves publish it because they do not moderate their sites.

The proposed Villar bill does not give special treatment to online publications or social networking companies. Under US law, specifically, Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, “interactive computer services,” shall not be held liable as “publishers or speakers” of content posted by third parties.

How does the law treat online publications? If a website is hosted on US soil, does that mean that it is under US law? If Facebook account is hosted in a UK server, does it mean that for that account, UK law must be observed? If the the IP address where the message was sent, does it mean, that’s the law everyone must follow?

If the Facebook account is set to private, meaning the conversation is limited and was never meant to be circulated, does defamation still count?

So a Filipino citizen who wrote a defamatory blog post against a Filipino politician who at the time of publication was in the United States, and posted the blog post in a US based server, would he then be subjected to Philippine law or US law?

If it is physical presence, how does that work if one uses a proxy server to publish said defamation? How does one prove a person is where he is then?

What makes the Villar libel bill suspect is the malicious intent that it conveys. It simply wishes that Philippine libel law extend to cyberspace. No thought has been given to the nature of cyberspace and how to actually remedy fairly justice. All it thinks is that people can use cyberspace to attack others.

How easy would it be then for this version of libel law be used to threaten civil liberties? How easy is it then to use this as a weapon that only protects the powers that be?

The wiser path is to set on the road to decriminalize libel law. It has for the longest time been used as a weapon, and even the late Mrs. Aquino used it as a weapon against Mr. Beltran. However right or wrong Mrs. Aquino was, should that make Mr. Beltran a criminal? We make too many people criminals, we don’t have enough room in our jails for them. We even have people who haven’t been convicted serving time, and many of them children. It must stop.

The second path is to write a better electronic libel law, but only when it has been decriminalized. Yes, it is far, far too easy to write something libelous online. Being anonymous makes it so easy to just write. And in some cases the party offended would need the defense of the law. It is so easy to be peeved when someone writes something we know isn’t true. It strikes at our pride, and slanders our honor. How then do we, netizens protect ourselves from that? So, it isn’t just a public figure, it is everyone who has a stake in this.

This is why Manny Villar is both right and wrong. He is right in that we need an electronic libel law. He is wrong in that what we need is a decriminalized libel law both for offline and online. We need an electronic libel law that takes into consideration the very nature of the Internet, and it requires an understanding of Cyberspace that obviously Mr. Villar values too little.   Libel too is an issue that not only affects what goes on in Social media, but as Libel Reform points out is a disgrace too in England, and ergo, it is a universal issue. We need the law to be fair, and not a weapon used for malice or to silence critics.

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