I am wondering if there’s a law that can be filed against the one who uploaded the videos which spread in the internet and on mobile phones this past few weeks. I decided to make a research about it, and this is what I found, the “Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009” aka RA 9995. This law was passed by Rep. Irwin Tieng, the law was ratified by the Lower House on Nov. 18, 2009 and by the Senate on Dec.1, 2009. The law was timely proposed due to the Hayden Kho and Katrina Halili Video that also spread all over the internet and uploaded on different sites. The “Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009” was formerly known as the “Anti-Cyberboso Bill” aims to protect the dignity and privacy of all Filipinos and guarantees full respect for human rights.

Here’s what the bill is all about:

Under the new law, a person is prohibited:

(a) To take photo or video coverage of a person or group of persons performing sexual act or any similar activity or to capture an image of the private area of a person/s such as the naked or undergarment clad genitals, public area, buttocks or female breast without the consent of the person/s involved and under circumstances in which the person/s has/have a reasonable expectation of privacy;

(b) To copy or reproduce, or to cause to be copied or reproduced, such photo or video or recording of sexual act or any similar activity, with or without consideration, notwithstanding that consent to record or take photo or video coverage of the same was given by such person/s;

(c) To sell or distribute, or cause to be sold or distributed, such photo or video or recording of sexual act, whether it be the original copy or reproduction thereof, notwithstanding that consent to record or take photo or video coverage of the same was given by such person/s; or

(d) To publish or broadcast, or cause to be published or broadcast, whether in print or broadcast media, or show or exhibit the photo or video coverage or recordings of such sexual act or any similar activity through VCD/DVD, internet, cellular phones and other similar means or device, notwithstanding that consent to record or take photo or video coverage of the same was given by such person/s.

Those found guilty of committing any of said prohibited acts will be penalized with imprisonment of not less than 3 years but not more than seven 7 years and a fine of not less than P100,000.00 but not more than P500,000.00, or both, at the court’s discretion.

If the violator is a juridical person, its license or franchise will be automatically deemed revoked and the persons liable will be the officers, including the editor and reporter in the case of print media, and the station manager, editor and broadcaster in the case of a broadcast media.  If the offender is a public officer or employee, or a professional, he/she will be administratively liable.  If the offender is an alien, he/she will be subject to deportation proceedings after serving his/her sentence and payment of fines.

Any photo or video, or any copy of such photo or video, obtained in violation of the law, will not be admissible in evidence in any judicial, quasi-judicial, legislative or administrative hearing or investigation.

A peace officer may use such photo or video or any copy of such photo or video as evidence in any civil, criminal investigation or trial of the crime of photo or video voyeurism, but only when so authorized by a written order of the court.  Such written order will be issued only upon written application and the examination under oath or affirmation of the applicant and the witnesses he/she may produce, and upon showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that photo or video voyeurism has been committed or is about to be committed, and that the evidence to be obtained is essential to the conviction of any person for, or to the solution or prevention of such, crime.

Now we all know that such law exists, so to Hayden Kho and Ramgen wannabees, you better think more than twice before doing some stupid recordings and stuff.

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Thanks to Mr. Richard H. Mamuyac (Communications Specialist of the People Management Association of the Philippines, PMAP) for choosing my New Year’s resolution and for including it on his article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. It was included in his article titled “New Year’s resolutions to be better employees”. I would also like to thank my good friend Christian Melanie Lee for informing me and sharing me the image of the said article. Please have time to read the whole article and be inspired.

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Am I the only one tired of this? Facebook “LIKES” for contest entry, text votes for a certain contestant, wherein the winner will be determined because of the number of votes they will garner. Is this the new way of judging? Obviously, this is the era when social media is fully utilized to entice readers and supporters. Are we so inclined to social media that sometimes we have neglected the quality aspect over quantity? If you know what I mean I am pretty sure you can relate on this article.

The Facebook “LIKE” Syndrome

It is clear to me that the more “LIKES” an entry will have is a solid proof that people really liked it. But come to think of it, if entry 1 has 900 friends, entry 2 has 200 friends, and entry 3 doesn’t have an FB account who you think already have the edge in winning? It is clear to see that entry 1 has the highest chance of bringing home the bacon. The probability was decreased to each competitor because of the number of people entry 1 has. If contests will always rely on this kind of judging, then those who have few friends are doomed. It’s the end of the world for them! Actually I have this friend who kept on winning promos and contests from different sponsors because of the number of “likes” she received for her entry.

The Text Votes Fever

Should I elaborate more? I think this is somewhat the same to the Facebook “LIKE” Syndrome but I think this one is massive and someone is gaining profit from it (sorry network providers). Want an example? It was so obvious that people were so disappointed on the recent Pilipinas Got Talent Grand Finals result. By the way I want to make it clear that I have nothing against the grand winners even though none of my bets made it. Let’s face it, I know who your bets are and probably we have the same contestants in mind. But what can we do, those contestants who won have more supporters than our bets and the worst part is what if those supporters can afford lots of mobile phone loads? We all know how each contestant managed to make it to the finals, all by means of text votes.

Applying this in the blogosphere:

I had a little chat with some blogger friends and this is about our disappointment on contests which rely on Facebook “LIKES” to determine who will win. Here are their observations and suggestions:

• The quality of the post/blog is neglected, liking without reading the article
• The more friends you have, the higher your chance to win
• Someone said that when he will launch a blog contest he will organize a panel of judges which are capable or criticizing post entries
• A criteria will be formulated
• Quality of comments from that post/entry will never be set aside, this is a new challenge for participants on how can they engage readers
• If really can’t be avoided, FB likes will have a small portion on the overall judging criteria (e.g. 5%)

I wish you can find time in answering the poll provided, with this I will have an idea what most people think on this topic. You can leave your comments or suggestions after the poll.

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Innovation, that’s what the Korea Electronics Show is all about, showcasing the technology that contributes to the rapid development of different products. Korea’s biggest electronics show is an event held every October and that’s the time they meet with buyers from North America, Europe and the Middle East. With their success in the 2010 Korea Electronics Show wherein 1, 283 representatives of IT industries who came from 23 countries participated, now this event is considered as a pilgrimage to those innovation enthusiasts. This year it was believed that over 1000 companies from 30 different countries will participate and they will present the products and brag about its functionality and advancements.

Let’s take a glimpse in the 2010 Korean Electronics Show

Source

This year’s Korea Electronics Show was organized by Korean Electronics Association (KEA) and it will be held at KINTEX (Korean International Exhibition Center), and will be hosted by Korea Ministry of Knowledge Economy. This 4-day event will start in October 12 at 10:00 a.m. and KES’ theme for this year is “Be Smart”

If you plan to check the electronics show, the visiting hours starts at 10:00 a.m. and ends at 5:00 p.m. from October 12 to October 15, 2011. This is a great chance for different companies to impress buyers about their product, it may be cell phones, semiconductors, automotive electronics, multimedia and other forms of communication. To those who wants to participate or who wants to buy, kindly Visit the Korea Electronics Show 2011 website (www.kes.org).

Here’s a little teaser about the upcoming KES event!

Source

To know more about the Korean Electronics Show kindly check the KES Official Facebook Page or follow them in Twitter (KES Official Twitter)

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Recently, there’s a news opinion I read which focuses on ethics of journalism. One of the points the author discussed was about the way how bloggers feed on news. It seems that some bloggers forgot the importance of when to limit themselves. The author set the “Christopher Lao flood incident” as an example wherein this poor guy was obviously a victim of cyber bullying. Though he did a mistake, the new media and social networks made the incident worse. It just took hours to make this man as one of the trending searches in the internet. He gained popularity but in a bad manner and as a result, he was humiliated by the embarrassment made by media.

One thing he also discussed is the lack of verifying, verifying the report not just focusing on it so you can formulate a certain article. “Verifying facts is the central function of journalism”, this is true! Blogging is journalism in a different form, and basically the ethics of journalism should also be kept in mind by us. A blogger or a journalist can gain trust if all that his reports and articles published are based on facts, unbiased and informative.

The Philippines is a country where socialism is usually welcome, and most of the times people forgot to limit themselves embracing it. Socialism with journalism when combined effectively is a very powerful tool to spread whatever form of media. As for bloggers, we use our articles to inform or to gain traffic on our blog sites so we use different social networking sites to spread what we want them to know. But I think we should also practice this so-called “sustained journalism” with a touch of fact-finding and proper disposition.

We, bloggers are one of the main factors contributing to the “warp speed” spreading of news, so we should always keep in mind the ethics of journalism. “Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision” according to Collin Powell so before we publish anything let us make sure that we made the article to inform, to spread what is true and fair.

“A fact is like a sack –it won’t stand up if it’s empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.”-Luigi Pirandello

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I read this news about Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) finalizing or should I say “already finalized” the line-up of the athletes who will represent our country in the upcoming SEA Games in Jakarta this November. To my surprise, it is not the Philippine Dragon Boat Team that they chose, instead they will send the team from the Philippine Canoe-Kayak Federation. Why? The PDBF paddlers are not recognized by POC as the official national sports association for dragon boat and they were not endorsed by the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC).

But there is still a chance for the PDBF paddlers to join SEA Games, if they will pass the qualifications of the canoe-kayak federation.

POC also commented that the PDBF paddlers are already old and they should give way to the new and young athletes. “They have the body, they have everything, but as we all know, ampaw na lang ‘yun,” Tamayo said. POC also alleges the PDBF team that they use steroids and they cheated the time trial results for the Asian Games.

My OPINION:

I found out that the International Olympic Committee came out with a directive that PDBF should be under the Canoe-Kayak federation as the national sports association. That is the reason POC doesn’t recognize PDBF as the team they should send. If the rules are set that way and it was done by due process, I think there’s no need to question about who’s going to SEA Games. So obviously there’s no one to blame because it was a directive which came from a higher organization. But I think it is not too late for them to officially recognize the PDBF paddlers, they should talk about it, pass the qualifications, finalize the requirements and  comply with the international standards.

Actually being not recognized is not what I am ranting about. I just don’t like the way how Tamayo commented the PDBF paddlers, “They have the body, they have everything, but as we all know, ampaw na lang ‘yun”. For me this is very insulting, does he know what he just said? How come these “old paddlers” managed to dominate the  International Dragon Boat Federation World Championships, bringing home five (5) gold medals and two (2) silver medals. Who’s “ampaw” now, maybe it’s your brain Mr. Tamayo?

I can’t accept this harsh reality that POC even alleged PDBF that they use steroids and they cheat. Crab mentality! If they were on steroids, why not investigate and obliged every member of the paddlers to undergo medical and laboratory examinations? If they cheat, why not ask the officials of the Asian Olympics that validated the results. I think you should do these to clear things, to clear your doubts.  Why not try to support our fellow countrymen instead of broadcasting such allegations that may ruin their reputation.

Just a suggestion, why not have a competition between the Philippine Canoe-Kayak Team and the Philippine Dragon Boat Team? Then let us see who deserves and who is competitive enough.

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Noah Everett, founder of Twitpic unveiled “Heello”…the so-called “Twitter clone”. Heello has the same features of Twitter (kaya nga clone di ba?), but there are some differences in some aspects. We call it “tweet” in Twitter, they call it “pings” once we sent a status message. We call it “retweet” in Twitter, they call it “echo” once we repost something. Another difference is, status updates change in real-time, unlike in Twitter that you will see the recent updates when you click a message below your “status update bar”.

Heello is also integrated to Twitter and Facebook and to different social networks. Here’s more, Heello will support video, checkins, SMS, mobile apps and other future development, according to Noah Everett.

Anyway, as the saying says “Imitation is the highest form of flattery”, I don’t know if that’s applicable in the cyber world.

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