Will I get arrested if I call Tito Sotto a buffoon?

It was crazier than usual in Manila last week — and that’s saying a whole lot. In a city where crazy is ordinary, last week seemed as if all the farmers in Sagada decided to burn their cannabis farms, and the smoke from the mountains blew straight into the halls of the Senate.

What the hell were they smoking?

It was a week dominated by only two headlines: The Cybercrime Prevention Act and the circus that is next year’s elections. 

It started on Oct. 1 or “Bloody Monday,” as it was called online, which saw the start of the filing of certificates of candidacy for next year’s elections — the usual trapos, has-been showbiz stars, relatives of sitting or dead politicians — wives, children, widows and widowers — and the crackpots that got their 15 minutes on primetime news.

But it was Oct. 3 or “Black Tuesday” that had the online community shaking in anger. By the early morning hours of Black Tuesday, Facebook and Twitter — 19.6 million Filipino FB users and 9.5 on Twitter — were awash in black profile photos and mock blacked-out messages.

The Supreme Court was supposed to decide en banc on the TRO filed by Karapatan and other groups to prevent the Cybercrime Law from being enforced Wednesday. (The hearings were postponed to Tuesday next week and so “e-martial law” started Wednesday.) 

Statuses on Facebook and tweets appeared like covert CIA dossiers — censorship based on RA 10175. It is the only law that people know by its formal name apart from RA 1081, which put the country under martial law on Sept. 21. 1972.

Exactly 40 years later, on Sept. 12, 2012, the Senate passed Senator Angara’s Cybercrime Law —with only Senator TG Guingona III opposing the bill — and all hell broke lose.

The senators should have known people would react the way they did — except they really did not read the final version of the bill, did they? They just signed it into law!

Sotto was allegedly the senator that inserted the Libel provision in the law under Section 4 or Cybercrime Offenses.

“(4) Libel. – The unlawful or prohibited acts of libel as defined in Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future.”

So, what’s wrong with Article 355 of the original law? Unlike in other countries, libel here is a criminal offense, meaning the journalist/writer can go to jail and at the same time face civil action and pay damages that routinely ask for P10 million and up.

(There is a bill to de-criminalize libel which, of course, hasn’t been passed.) 

The Cybercrime Law also provides that libel may be “committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future.”

Wow, this law is so futuristic!

Yes, whatever comes after Facebook and Twitter — the law has it covered. And if they invent gadgets that you can strap on your forehead and broadcast your status or opinion to the mass — that’s covered too.

 Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock in the past two months knows now the kind of arrogance and idiocy that float around in the Senate.

Online disgust has been expressed by the Filipinos, from Internet memes to new terms (“Sinotto” for copying). This article, for instance, had the original title “Will I get arrested if I call Tito Sotto a plagiarizing idiot?” but a colleague suggested “buffoon” instead, so Sotto will have to reach for a dictionary. 

But Sotto and his defenders are crying cyber bullying. So the question then is: If you criticize a public official or public personalities like actors — is it bullying?

If I call Sotto a plagiarizing moron, is it bullying? If I say Pia Cayetano was lazy as evidenced by her tweets — “No one really noticed, not media, not netizens and sadly not me….” and “I would have been happy to block libel prov if I had seen it or someone pointed it out. Sadly we cannot catch every provision all the time” — is it cyber bullying — or libel? Or simply an opinion on a public official? 

The truth is, Cayetano and her staff were too lazy to read the law in full — and that goes for all senators who are now scrambling to amend the law, including Chiz Escudero and Angara himself.

By Wednesday of the crazy week, Day One of e-martial law, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, herself not a big fan of the Constitution it seems (hey, is that libel?), ordered the NBI to hunt down the hackers that attacked key government websites.

Hackers had been in the past days defacing government websites — have people forgotten that the most lethal viruses in the early years of the Internet originated here? — while the online community produced hundreds of memes mocking senators and protesting the curtailment of freedom of speech.

So, what do we make of the Cybercrime Law apart from the libel provision? Some provisions under Section 4 should have been passed long ago, such as those on hacking, identity theft, fraud, cyber squatting, forgery, and content-related offenses like child pornography and unsolicited commercial communications.

But there are gray areas, too, as far as content is concerned. The Cybersex provision makes no distinction between profit or personal use, whether it is between two consenting adults or minors. “The willful engagement, maintenance, control, or operation, directly or indirectly, of any lascivious exhibition of sexual organs or sexual activity, with the aid of a computer system, for favor or consideration” is open to wide interpretation.

The next battle for netizens, it seems, is tomorrow, Monday, when the Senators who hurriedly passed the law are now tripping over each other to amend it, and on Tuesday at the Supreme Court.

As for now, the online world continues its protest against RA 10175...until Sotto comes up with more buffoonery.