The Boy Bastos issue:

It’s obviously just a case of clashing personalities. I doubt if there will be any basis to charging Mr. Boy Bastos in our legal courts, aside from the potentially libelous inclusion of a certain senator’s name on the boybastos.com domain registration info.

I also doubt Mr. Mark Verzo himself produces the pornographic content on his website. And in all likelihood, his web host is located off-shore (in US soil, perhaps?). So does the Philippine legal system have jurisdiction? I’m not sure. I haven’t checked the e-commerce act lately. But I would think that references to geographic location of data would be murky at best. We are, after all, still in the stone age of information technology.

(Why Stone Age? Think of the ZTE broadband deal. Incidentally, having worked in government for three years, I’m aware that the current administration has “fast-tracked” some deals with the Chinese government for some ODA projects. So that means even with government checks and balances, it only takes just a word from the higher-ups to get people to “approve” projects. So gov’t reviews and negotiations just become ministerial, in effect.).

It’s the intarwebs people! Web 2.0! User-submitted content. I wonder what the authorities will book Mr. Verzo with. And I wonder why they had to confiscate equipment (maybe they can charge him with running pirated software?).

Remember the Netopia lobby to censor the Internet? What about the congressman who blamed porn proliferation on 3G and broadband?

We need new blood in government. Maybe I’ll run in the next elections.

Update: Second thoughts on Boy Bastos (and Why Government needs people like us).

Take stock of your health. Learn about hypertension now.

Tags: , | Viewed 3467 times

Related Posts