Anti-“Hentai” Bill Now Law
December 2nd, 2009 | Published in Anime and Manga, Society and Business | 11 Comments
I was out of the country covering an international anime convention when this happened: President Arroyo has signed the Anti-Child Pornography bill into law.
The law will not only penalize persons in possession of “any representation, whether visual, audio or written combination thereof, by electronic, mechanical, digital, optical, magnetic or any other means, of a child engaged or involved in real or simulated explicit sexual activity”, it also requires cybercafe owners to police users for their browsing habits.
Tarlac Rep. Monica Teodoro — the principal author of Republic Act 9775, has stated her pleasure over the passing of the law on her very first term in the House of Representatives. Rep. Teodoro is the chairperson of the House committee on the welfare of children. She will not be running for re-election, in order to help her husband former Defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr., in his bid for the Presidency.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, there appears to be a fair amount of political finagling and mutual back-scratching involved in the unusually speedy passing of the new law. The mere fact that this law was authored by a “future First Lady” (which I hope will never come to fruition) is enough to get my hackles raised.
As for the law itself — personally, I do not purchase nor collect CP, and I am all for the prosecution of pedophiles and child pornographers exploiting real children. Nevertheless, I am still shocked and incensed at the ill-defined, all-encompassing nature of the law — allowing it to prosecute people with the legal equivalent of “if it looks like a duck, it probably is a duck”.
Pretty soon they’ll start confiscating our laptops, throttling our internet connections, and seizing our DVD and comic book imports in the guise of “protecting the children” — children who, I’d love to point out, are not even real. MARTIAL LAW ISDATCHU?!
December 3rd, 2009at 12:28(#)
Plain stupidity by a “future first lady. That’s all.
December 3rd, 2009at 15:00(#)
Imho, some law is still better than none, even if it’s half-witted. Maybe it will put people who prey on kids in jail. It’s an annoyance to us at most, maybe a vague fear at worst, but in the grander scheme of things, does that really matter?
December 3rd, 2009at 15:09(#)
if used accordingly — sure, it’s great. but the philippines does not exactly have a great track record in arresting the right people. they might use the new law to prosecute small-time offenders for the sake of making arrests, but i doubt they will have the political will to go after the real sex offenders and child pornographers. just take a look at ROMEO JALOSJOS having his jail sentence shortened, and then receiving full pardon afterward. anyway — that’s probably just the cynic in me talking. i wish i had your cautious optimism about the law finally being able to tackle the huge problem with child prostitution.
December 3rd, 2009at 22:10(#)
Wow. Why am I so doubtful that they will be able to pull all of this off?
December 5th, 2009at 14:57(#)
Well, i agree that child pornography is abundant in our country. But they should be more focused on poverty that is the main cause of all crimes here. In other words, this law is just the “palusot” of our President on all of her controversies.
December 24th, 2009at 16:56(#)
yet another sign of excellence in political stupidity.
January 26th, 2010at 02:35(#)
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