CRIMINALIZING ONLINE LIBEL

By ROD P. KAPUNAN

Here's the personal observation of one lawyer who commented on the recent decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of the Republic Act No. 10175 or Cybercrime Prevention Act that criminalizes online libel. Under Article 353 of the Revised Penal Code, the important element of the crime is PUBLICATION of the imputation of a crime, or vice or defect, real or imaginary, or an imputation of any act, omission, condition, status or circumstances tending to cause dishonor, discredit or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead. 

Reading it again, anybody who intends to libel one must ensure that his imputation is PUBLISHED. That means, he has to use some kind of medium for the public to read and know his imputation, like using the newspapers, radio, television, pasting posters to be read and seen in public, distributing handbills to the public in general, or through the internet for which he purposely intended his libelous article to be read all over the world. 

Without it, one's libelous imputation remains a privilege communication. It is not the number of persons that counts, but of the fact that it was addressed to specific persons by the author he specifically identified as his friends for them to read or to share his ideas containing his imputations. Whether or not the readers to whom he addressed his article will agree with him is beside the point. What is important is it was specifically addressed by the author to a particular person. What he wrote remains a privilege communication even if he wrote, MGA GAGO SILA!


To make ourselves clear, if one uses his Yahoo, Facebook or Twitter account to communicate to his selected, chosen or accepted friends, all his communications with regard to them remains a privilege communication, unless as said the author used the internet as a means to publish his imputations. But for as long as his message is addressed exclusively to his friends, it remains a privilege communications. He need not even invoke his freedom of expression because that belongs to another legal parameter. 

Unless, as said, the person used his say Facebook, Yahoo, or Twitter account for the world to read or to be accessible to all for then that would amount to PUBLICATION. There could be no case of online libel should the person or the government agency read an article transmitted through the internet without permission from the author or that it was not addressed to them.

Internet communication is now the modern equivalent of postal letters of which the law provides protection for privacy of communications. On the contrary, anybody who will pry open that message sent through the internet without the consent of the author would violate that law.


In fact, the practice of the US National Security Agency (NSA) to pry internet communications sent by its citizens, not open to the public in general, was raised by American whistleblower Edward Snowden. The act of intercepting communications is the one that is considered a threat to freedom of expression. In cyber language that criminal act of prying open communications by persons not authorized to receive them amounts to hacking, a threat this pretending-to-be-government wants to adapt. 

By the way, that law was merely copied by our subservient senators from the US legislated law. Kaya palubog na ang America at balak pa natin sundan sila sa impyerno!