Cybercrime Law put to First Tests

     

THE country’s newly minted Cybercrime Law may soon be tested. Word on the street is that a mass housing developer is contemplating filing online libel charges against those behind what it calls “vicious Internet and social media attacks” on its projects.

While the developer—Pro-Friends—has yet to file what could be an important precedent-setting case against those using Internet platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to disparage it, the firm has already set the ball in motion.

Pro-Friends, in fact, won round one of its effort to combat a “syndicated effort” to destroy its reputation when the Regional Trial Court of Mandaluyong City issued a warrant for the arrest of several persons for grave slander and oral defamation.

Interestingly, one Biz Buzz source pointed out that there’s a force associated with the family of a realtor-politician behind the concerted attacks on Pro-Friends, so business rivalry could be the root of this issue.

If this is true, to whom does the hidden hand behind the defamatory campaign against Pro-Friends belong?

In fact, what Pro-Friends calls a “demolition job” against it has been going on for sometime now. The property firm believes it isn’t a spontaneous outpouring of protest by disgruntled clients, but rather a “well-funded and orchestrated by unseen hands who want to run the property development company to the ground so they can have a monopoly of the market.”

“The black propaganda campaign has been stretched by hiring ‘professional protesters’ to mount lightning mass actions complete with placards carrying libelous slogans against Pro-Friends,” said one source familiar with the reality firm’s side of the issue.

If rumors are to be believed, this developer politician has even used his political power to initiate investigations in both houses of Congress to pressure Pro-Friends, supposedly in a bid to cripple its marketing program—all while the politician’s firm pirated key marketing people of the beleaguered real estate firm to work in his own.

Luckily for Pro-Friends, it was thrown a lifeline and a vote of confidence by GT Capital through a capital infusion of P7.24 billion, with the announced interest to acquire a controlling 51-percent stake in three years. 

Source: Business Inquirer