Evading justice by invoking an imagined prescriptive period

THE strategy by an expensive law firm to dismiss a prominent personality’s cyber libel conviction on the claim that the prescriptive period — the period up to when a legal action may be filed or instituted — has expired, may sound legalistic and compassionate, but it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of both law and logic.

The argument disregards the nature of the internet, the deliberate structure of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, and the continuing damage that online defamation inflicts. To uphold such reasoning would not protect press freedom; it would reward irresponsibility and encourage the very abuse of digital platforms the law was designed to prevent.

Cyber libel is not ordinary libel. It is a new offense defined under Republic Act (RA) 10175, the Cybercrime Prevention Act, which explicitly raises the penalty for libel committed “through a computer system” by one degree higher than that under the Revised Penal Code (RPC).

Ordinary libel carries the penalty of prisión correccional, or 6 months to 6 years.

Cyber libel carries a penalty of prisión mayor, or 6 to 12 years. Because RA 10175 is a special law, and because it is silent on prescription, Act 3326 — the statute governing offenses under special laws — applies.

That act states clearly: “Crimes punishable by imprisonment of six years or more shall prescribe after twelve years.”

Prescribes

Thus, cyber libel prescribes — culpability is extinguished — after 12 years, not one. The Court of Appeals recognized this in a 2022 ruling affirming the conviction of a libelous writer and his editor. The reasoning was sound: the higher penalty signals legislative intent that the State should have a longer period to prosecute such serious offenses.

To insist that cyber libel must share the one-year prescription of ordinary libel is to erase that intent and reduce the Cybercrime Act to redundancy. It is also to ignore the very reason for its passage: to address crimes that, because of technology, have magnified and prolonged impact.

Unlike print, the internet has no “yesterday’s paper.” What appears online stays online. It can be searched, shared, mirrored, archived, and reposted indefinitely. A defamatory story on a newspaper’s front page is forgotten in days; online, it can haunt the victim for years.

In this particular case, the internet article accusing a hardworking businessman of involvement in drug smuggling and human trafficking was published in 2012, before RA10175 took effect. But it was republished as a defiant message to the businessman, in February 2014 — two years later. That single update revived and recirculated the article on the news site, making it visible again to search engines.

A regional trial court judge ruled in 2020 that this constituted republication, thus falling squarely under the Cybercrime Law. The damage to the businessman’s reputation did not end in 2012; it continued daily as the article remained accessible. For eight years, it lingered on that internet news site, even if it was blatantly false.

Act

Prescription presupposes that the wrongful act has ceased, and the State has slept on its rights. But there was no sleep here — the wrong was alive and viral. The libel was continuous, the injury renewed each day. To say that the clock began running in 2012 is to deny the enduring nature of digital defamation.

Consider the absurdity that would follow from applying the one-year rule. A small-town columnist whose defamatory article appears once in a printed tabloid would face prosecution for only a year. But a global online publisher whose libelous post can reach millions indefinitely could plead prescription after the same period — even as the content remains accessible and harmful. That would invert the law’s logic: the greater the reach and permanence of the crime, the quicker the escape from liability.

The higher penalty for cyber libel is Congress’ acknowledgment that online speech wields greater power and, therefore, demands greater responsibility. To shorten the prescription period is to weaken accountability precisely where it should be strongest.

That libelous writer’s defenders cry ex post facto, claiming punishment for an act done before the law existed. That claim fails once republication is established. The actionable offense occurred not in 2012, but in 2014, when the article was updated and again made public under the effective Cybercrime Act. The continued presence of the libelous material online constitutes ongoing publication. The Supreme Court has long recognized that when an act continues after a new law’s passage, prosecution under that law is not retroactive.

In short, that libelous writer and his editor were not convicted for what was written before 2012 but for keeping it alive afterward. The law cannot pretend that what remains accessible to millions is frozen in the past.

Confuse

Those who frame that writer and his editor’s conviction as an assault on press freedom confuse criticism of power with impunity from responsibility. Freedom of the press does not absolve anyone of the duty to verify facts or correct falsehoods. The businessman was a private citizen, not a government official, and the article accused him of serious crimes without evidence. The news website never sought his side, never issued a correction, and never removed the story. That these criminals have managed to let the case drag on for 12 years is proof enough of their guilt.

For years, that personality has portrayed herself as a victim of political persecution by former president Duterte, whom the US moved heaven and earth to remove for his anti-US stance.

But this case arose from a private complaint by a man wrongly maligned. To trivialize his grievance is to deny ordinary citizens the same protection of reputation that journalists claim for themselves.

If the case were dismissed on prescription grounds, it would send a dangerous message: that journalists and influencers may destroy reputations online and simply wait out the clock. Such a precedent would not protect free speech — it would legalize defamation by delay.

Other democratic jurisdictions have adapted their laws to the digital age.

– In the United Kingdom, each fresh online access constitutes a new publication, resetting prescription.

– In Australia, courts recognize a “multiple publication rule.”

– Even the United States, despite its strong First Amendment, treats continued online accessibility as renewed injury in certain contexts.

These jurisdictions understand that the internet’s permanence defeats the rationale for short prescriptive periods. The Philippine judiciary should not lag behind. The Supreme Court would be in effect amending the Cyber libel Law if it prescribes the libel committed in this case.

But it cannot amend, or even “bend” the law as a legally illiterate senator remarked, it can only interpret it.

My series on the fallacies of our claims to the South China Sea continues on Friday.

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Evading justice by invoking an imagined prescriptive period
Source: Breaking News PH