The chilling effect of a Damocles’ sword dangling over those who are wired basically remains. Any blanket threat of criminal prosecution for online libel tilts the balance against untrammeled state intervention and will practically result in effective censorship, if not timidity or inordinate trepidation.
Freedom of speech and expression is too valuable a democratic right to be curtailed and penalized. It is precisely this freedom that eventually screens, isolates, exposes and debunks abuses of such freedom, and protects and ensures other liberties.
The valid exercise of a right should not be punished. It is far more lofty to be able to freely twit the excesses of Big Brother (which wants only the official government line or its version of “truth” to prevail or dominate such potent a medium as cyberspace) than to be unthinking robots or docile androids.
—EDRE U. OLALIA, secretary general,
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, nupl2007@gmail.com