excerpt from gma news
Sharing something about yourself may be a violation under two existing anti-cybercrime laws, a University of the Philippines (UP) professor said at a forum. Technology law expert said in a forum that the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and its twin, the Data Protection Act of 2011, attempt to protect all personal information and this might explicitly threaten how netizens naturally use social media.
"Whenever you say anything about something else, even about yourself, you may already be breaching a person's privacy rights. You disclose personal information," he said. The lawyer explained that "personal information" is any piece of information that can be linked to a person's identity, the revealing of which is a purported crime under the two measures.
He added that the restrictions the new cyber law has placed on how users share information online is a form of censorship.
"All existing crimes committed through technology are now cyber crimes," he said. A human rights lawyer, who was also at the forum, warned that online content producers--which can be anyone--can be sued more than once under the new cyber law. "If I publish one article against someone in [both] my blog and my print column, I can be sued twice: One before the [Regional Trial Court] and one under the Cybercrime [Prevention] Act," he said.
He said that one of the main implementation problems of online libel as indicated in the new measure is to whom the crime will be blamed on.
"Problem with the cyber libel provision is you do not know who will be held liable. In the original libel law, editors, journalists and publishers are liable. You also know the venue, the number of people subscribed to it," he said.
Even internet providers who do not originally have responsibility over content can be held liable under the new cyber law since they are the equivalent of publishers, he added.
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