Cybercrime law violates rights

Lawyers will ask the courts to nullify a new Philippine law that makes electronic libel a criminal offense. Lawyer and UP professor Harry Roque says this means that unlike ordinary libel complaints which are oftentimes brought against printed newspapers, any Twitter and Facebook user is now liable for prosecution. The law violates freedom of expression, Roque says. “We will see the PNoy administration in court on this one. And we will prevail. For unlike other laws that enjoy the presumption of regularity, this Cybercrime law, insofar as it infringes on freedom of expression, will come to court with a very heavy presumption of unconstitutionality.”

Read Roque’s analysis of the law on Rappler