CYBER LIBEL | Lawmaker proposes changes in cyber libel law after high-profile conviction

June 18, 2020 , 03:55 PM

June 18, 2020 – A lawmaker in the lower house of Congress has proposed to shorten to one year the prescription period of the cyber libel after the conviction of an award-winning journalist and a former researcher on a high-profile cybercrime case.

Cagayan de Oro Congressman Rufus Rodriguez has filed a bill amending the 2012 Cybercrime law, proposing to change the prescription period for the offenses.

Under his proposed House Bill 7010, the Cybercrime Prevention Act should only have a prescription period of three years, while cyber libel charges could be filed within one year from the date of publication.

A Manila regional trial court early this week convicted Maria Ressa, executive editor and chief executive officer of online news platform Rappler and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr of cyber libel, sentencing them to serve up to six years in jail.

Rodriguez said prosecutors used an American colonial period law, Act No. 3326, enacted in December 1926, to pin down Ressa and Santos because the libel laws under the revised penal code in 1934 prohibited state prosecutors from pursuing a case against them.

Under the little known 1926 law, a libel case can be pursued even 12 years after the offense was committed if the crime is punishable by six years.

Law experts have also questioned the republication and prescription aspects of the court’s decision because the cybercrime law itself was enacted months after the original article was posted in May 2012.

Manila regional trial court branch 46 judge, Rainelda Estacio-Montesa, had ruled in favor of the prosecutors on the prescription period, rejecting the defense counsels’ position that it was not valid.

Both Far Eastern University (FEU) Law Dean Mel Sta. Maria and retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, insisted the case should not have been filed in the first place.

Sta. Maria, who was one of the petitioners who questioned the Cybercrime Law in 2014, insisted the Supreme Court already declared that cyber libel “is not a new crime”, and that it is a merely similar means in committing ordinary libel, which is already punishable in the Revised Penal Code.

This Supreme Court declaration, Sta. Maria says, contradicts Montesa’s ruling that cyber libel is a separate offense from ordinary libel.

Under the Revised Penal Code, libel has a prescriptive period of one year. (Reports from Ria Fernandez | Katrina Elaine Alba/MM)

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