New bill out to quash Internet porn

Well, at least in the Philippines. A new bill has been submitted to the Senate is entitled "Anti-Obscenity and Pornography Act of 2008" (Senate Bill No. 2464). Introduced by Sen. Manny Villar, the proposed bill defines obscenity and pornography as well as prescribing punitive fines and imprisonment to those convicted. Here's an excerpt of the bill: a) “Obscene” refers to anything that is indecent or offensive or contrary to good customs or religious beliefs, principles or doctrines, or tends to corrupt or deprave the human mind, or is calculated to excite impure thoughts or arouse prurient interest, or violates the proprieties of language and human behavior, regardless of the motive of the producer, printer, publisher, writer, importer,seller, distributor or exhibitor such as, but not limited to: (1) showing, depicting or describing sexual acts; (2) showing, depicting or describing human sexual organs or the female breasts; (3) showing, depicting or describing completely nude human bodies (4) describing erotic reactions, feelings or experiences on sexual acts or; (5) performing live sexual acts of whatever form. (b) “Pornographic or pornography” refers to objects or subjects of film, television shows, photography, illustrations, music, games, paintings, drawings, illustrations, advertisements, writings, literature or narratives, contained in any format, whether audio or visual, still or moving pictures, in all forms of film, print, electronic, outdoor or broadcast mass media, or whatever future technologies to be developed, which are calculated to excite, stimulate or arouse impure thoughts and prurient interest, regardless of the motive of the author thereof. The full copy of the bill can be downloaded here. With that definition, I can only think of hundreds of sites, magazines, shows and games that could be adversely be affected once this becomes enacted.

• All those kids in Friendster posing nude pictures of themselves and their partners.
• Chatrooms and Yahoogroups that caters to the adult group.
• Blogs and forums publishing photos of nude models, etc.
• People on YouTube uploading video clips of obscene acts.
• Magazines with sexy bikini-clad models acting out a sexually-stimulating poses.
• Dating sites that promotes sex eyeballs (SEB)

How about the tabloids? The Pay per View? And so many others. It would surprise the author of this bill to know that the Philippines is ranked #8 in worldwide porn revenues with about $1 billion in annual sales. Here are some more interesting figures about the pron industry:

• Every second - $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography
• Every second - 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography
• Every second - 372 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines
• 4.2 million porn websites (12% of total websites)
• 68 million porn-related search requests daily (25% of total search engine requests)
• 1.5 billion porn-related downloads a month from P2P networks (35% of all downloads)
• 42.7% of internet users have viewed porn online

The debate though would revolve around the definition, personal taste, and where to draw the line between pornography and art. But it's a debate that we've already been talking about for decades. - Abe Olandres / YugaTech