The Fat Man Today

This will be a short post, and will probably be a very opinionated one at that, so caveat emptor and all that jazz. Today is the first of October, and we have two more days to storm the Supreme Court with our prayers. There are proper avenues of complaint, and if everyone were to try to show their displeasure with the law, there’s a small chance – small, but a chance is a chance – that we can make a difference.

A bit too late to talk about the Cybercrime Prevention act, but let’s get to it. A couple of posts ago, I wrote about what the Pinoy blogger’s role in the Internet of 2012 was / is. Last week, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 was turned into law. For those who aren’t aware, this law possesses several intrinsic positive traits, including the penalization of fraud, cybersquatting, child pornography, and other ways of trafficking illegal substances online. However, this law also criminalizes libel.

I think most, if not all of the readers of my website have seen exactly what kind of ass Tito Sotto has been making of himself the past few days. The unraveling of the man continues with every word that escapes from his mouth, but the sad fact remains that the true danger of recent events lies not in the deconstruction of the man with the mustache, but in what these events could mean for the evolution of the Philippine Internet.

The past week, we Filipinos were treated to another show of dualities. In just the span of seven (give or take a few) days, the two types of public servants we are forced to live with were brought to the limelight in two equally tragic events. I speak of the deconstruction of Senator Vicente Sotto III’s turno en contra speech against the RH Bill, and the plane crash of DILG Secretary Jesse Manalastas Robredo.