eric cruz :

I got posers? After all your strong arguments resorting to this shit? Lame.

Guys, what’s eric talking about now? Posers??

of course, it’s really not that simple, and even Article 19, Paragraph 3 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes two exceptions. note that public morals is a recognized concept.

Who decides what things you can and cannot write about? You can’t let anyone else determine that for you.

Nods. That’s a fair approximation of prior restraint and therefore anathema to the idea of freedom of expression. No law, court, nor private citizen has the right nor privilege to coerce you to write stuff that you don’t want to write. Those who attempt to do such coercion follow in the footsteps of Torquemada, in a manner of speaking, by burning at the stake those who don’t cleave to their demands.

Also, IIRC, there are some law enforcement writers and analysts who say that those who shoot journalists over articles written are those who are frustrated by that constitutional guarantee.

To stay on topic without going to the bigger picture that will cross over to dissent and demands for accountability (a concern you are correct to point out), a gentle caution: our existing laws (like Article 201) provide for the concepts of “indecent”, “obscene”, and “pornographic”, despite the fact that their definitions have not been codified clearly.

There are some proposals (like the “Anti- Cyber Boso” bill in Congress), even in other jurisdictions (such as the recently shot-down obscenity bill in Florida, IIRC) — apparently because of the lobbying of the religious right and similar — but since there’s been no real success in legislation to date, the most we can rely on is the Miller vs. State of California case for precedent… which your rightly point out can be argued for or against, as its own definition is, using your words, murky. (Some lawyers prefer the term “flexible”. I think Miller vs. CA is a bit of a cop-out myself, but it’s the precedent even our courts recognize.)

“…if you’re a blogger, and you write about (or against) government, you might find yourself sharing a cell with the guy over writing things that ‘are contrary to law, public order, morals, good customs, established policies, lawful orders, decrees and edicts.’ “

Who decides what things you can and cannot write about? You can’t let anyone else determine that for you.

Just about anything you could write about in an honest, even irreverent way, could set off somebody out there to go apeshit on you and misconstrue all you’ve spoken about as “offensive” or “contrary to good customs,” whatever that could mean. Worse, someone is misinterpreting your words for you and you go to prison for it. Oh, the incidence of douchebaggery, like Richard Gutierrez’s filed case against PEP (which everybody with at least half a brain sees as an attempt to make a quick buck, even their own attorney, but I won’t get into that), will increase dramatically.

It’s exactly why our laws are codified: because everything else is fair game for subjective treatment and manipulation. Precedents would come in handy, but they’re argued against nonetheless (because hey, what are lawyers for, right?). What happens when there are none? Ah, murky waters indeed.

Anyway, the scary implication is that, anything you say can and will be used against you, even if you were rightfully expressing dissent and simply demanding accountability. Do you want those in power to go after you for criticizing them? Of course, not. Blogging under a different name can’t protect you from someone who has enough resources to silence you, so you could go underground, or you could shut up altogether – either way they’ve taken your voice from you. While you’re silent and they get the far larger “share-of-voice,” their lies will prevail.

You wouldn’t want our country to treat voices of dissent like North Korea and China do. Even I can’t comment like this (or even post my animated pics at your other article Political ads) if my freedom of speech were limited like that.

the 8.4 million blogger is here: http://reynaelena.com/2009/03/20/someone-on-filipino-voices-is-testing-the-waters-to-sabotage-me-by-impersonating-me/