Certain adult sites are now supposedly banned in the Philippines — or, at least, users have noted that some of them are no longer accessible. BBC News reports…
The Philippines government has not given any official explanation of why the sites have suddenly been blocked.
However, the country’s National Telecommunications Commission confirmed to CNN that it had ordered all the nation’s ISPs to block access from 14 January.
But social media chatter suggests customers using Globe and other ISPs can still access the sites.
This follows a report issued by one of the sites that Filipinos spend an “insane” amount of time watching adult videos over the Net. According to the report, Filipinos spend an average of more than 12 minutes per session, way above the nine and a half minute global average.
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Scientists state that excessive pornography viewing can be unhealthy if it becomes problematic for an individual due to personal or social reasons, including excessive time spent viewing pornography instead of interacting with others. Individuals may report depression, social isolation, career loss, decreased productivity, or financial consequences as a result of their excessive Internet pornography viewing impeding on their social life. Frequent consumers of pornography tend to experience more loneliness, and sexually inexperienced consumers of porn tend to have lower self-esteem with regard to their bodies and sexual potential as compare themselves to the actors in the pornographic material.
But is censoring the Net the solution to what, essentially, is an unscientifically-verified national obsession with viewing adult content online? The proposal to ban adult content delivered over the Net in the Philippines is not new. Back in 2014, then Justice Secretary Leila de Lima invoked existing laws against the sexual abuse of minors to propose such a measure. But, in general, efforts mounted by the Philippine government to combat child abuse has been spotty at best; more often than not prompted by foreign law enforcement agencies that have traced sources of the illegal content reaching their shores to criminals operating in the Philippines.
Some observers note the current ban on the several adult sites was done in an arbitrary manner underpinned by nebulous reference to existing cyber crime laws in the Philippines. However, Republic Act 9775 or the “Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009” mandates the Inter-Agency Council against Child Pornography (IACACP) under the guidelines of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to oversee the implementation of the following measures…
The NTC shall furnish ISPs with a list of the pornographic websites provided by the IACACP for their immediate blocking. Thereafter, the ISPs must submit to the IACACP within 5 days from the end of each month, a list of all the websites that were blocked, which subscribers attempted to access. In addition, they must inform the Philippine National Police or the National Bureau of Investigation of any form of child pornography committed using their services or facilities, within 7 days from obtaining such facts and circumstances. Thus, for purposes of investigation and prosecution by the concerned authorities, all ISPs must preserve their customers’ data record particularly the time, origin and destination of access.
Given the renowned unreliability of Internet services in the Philippines, it may be likely that various Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the Philippines could be very much supportive of — or even behind — the move to throttle access to adult content over the Net. Streaming video content over the Net is extremely resource-intensive and, suffice to stay, probably puts disproportionate burden on the Philippines’ meagre bandwidth availability. Indeed, the recent findings surrounding the national obsession with adult videos may have given an escape hatch to the big monopolistic telco providers in the Philippines.
Many Internet access products marketed by these ISPs offer “unli” (unlimited”) access — a promise that has been called out by leading social media “activists” as misleading. However, it should be noted that 1 to 1.5 GB (the equivalent of 8-10 hours of digital video) is more than enough for an entire month of reasonable usage. It is likely that those who complain the most are heavy consumers of high-bandwidth content like videos, online games, and pirated content — Internet applications the productive contribution to the economy of which remain highly dubious.
The key concept here, therefore, is productive contribution to the economy. Is watching adult content over the Net a productive activity? Does it contribute to enriching society as a whole? These are the questions that should guide the whole debate around this “issue”.
[NB: Parts of this article were lifted from the Wikipedia.org article “Effects of pornography” in a manner compliant to the terms stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that governs usage of content made available in this site.]
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
There is a very simple reason why Filipinos spend more time in porn sites than people do in other countries. It has to do with poor internet speed that make the video loading very slow. Thus the person has to wait & wait for the video to load, extending the time spent on the site. It isn’t that Pinoys like sex more than other people, but rather that to technology here is so piss poor.
Undoubtedly true.
People hate whataboutism when it’s being used against them. With that said, the porn ban is as stupid as the Prohibition.
The other winners here are the unvetted porn sites which can show two high schoolers in “scandals” in exchange for getting your devices butt-raped by ads and redirects.
VPN’s specifically for porn access in the PH will also be a thing.
Well, the government should also consider banning pornography in tabloids as well. These are far more accessible (and more affordable) to people. You could see it peddled in the streets and sidewalks. What happened to the so-called anti-smut campaign implemented in the 90’s? hanggang simula lang
Yeah, well, playing with their cocks IS the national sport.
It makes me laugh how lawmakers here manage to couch their stupidity in such high-falutin’ language. I have no idea where child-porn peddlers hide out and don’t want to, but I would imagine they don’t have ordinary websites, which would have easily-traceable physical addresses. Even if they did, blocking one simply forces the owner to move to a different domain.
And of course, going after the actual crooks in person would be too much effort, wouldn’t it?
I blame Maria Ozawa. 😀
Today, porn.
Tomorrow, your opinion.
That’s how it always goes.
I have seen the Leila de Lima/Ronnie Dayan pornographic videos.
They are free and were not banned.
Anybody who have technical knowledge on computers, can find ways to access pornographic sites in the cyberspace.
They can ban. However, they cannot Police all the sites !
did your eyes melt? 🙂
No… Honestly , I was appalled by Leila de Lima and Ronnie Dayan, copulating…they gave me nightmares, up to now !
Why does everyone want to use porn sites that may have children on it? The regular official porn sites that have all the adult content verified to child free is allowed. There are many providers like hot movies that are in compliance with the regulation and that are not and will not be blocked y the law.
Philippine ISPs emerge as winners?! There’s more to this than meets the eye!
Excerpt from Rigoberto Tiglao’s article: “The newest, yet hidden, Philippine oligarch isn’t even Filipino: Anthoni Salim”
Indonesian magnate Anthoni Salim “has never ever set foot on Philippine soil, yet his First Pacific Co. Ltd. conglomerate in the Philippines has achieved growth through major moves under each of the past four Philippine administrations…”
“Salim is the controlling owner through his 45-percent stake in First Pacific Co. Ltd. This is the mother firm of the country’s biggest public utility companies, which include the lucrative cellphone sector (PLDT’s Smart)”
http://www.rigobertotiglao.com/2016/08/31/the-newest-yet-hidden-philippine-oligarch-isnt-even-filipino-anthoni-salim/
That made me laugh too. The only thing the Philippines ever seems to excel at is being bad. It occurred to me that this moralistic posturing is such a boon to the telcos, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re behind it.
Here’s why: video is the biggest bandwidth hog there is. By blocking these popular sites, PLDT’s antiquated pipes will look noticably clearer. Service might appear to get (slightly) better for the majority of users, and they can brag to Duterte that they’re doing something positive, without actually doing anything to fix real problems with their business.
Or maybe I’m crediting them with more brains than they actually have.
It’s actually online gaming that consumes bandwidth the most which I’m sure is next on the chopping block.
Fair point. I suppose it depends how Pinoys waste the majority of their time: watching porn or playing games 🙂
I don’t think this is quite accurate though. A typical video stream needs anywhere from 1-4MBit/sec, depending on resolution and encoding. Games typically demand about one-tenth of that, but short latency times are critical. People tend to confuse latency with bandwidth, but they’re completely different things.
I really hope they don’t ban online gaming. It’s probably the only thing that prevents Pinoy teenagers from walking around the streets hacking each other to death for entertainment.
Our local politicians have found a new scapegoat for our country’s woes. Makes me wonder why Japan, Sweden, the USA and some other advanced countries where pornography is legal don’t affect them at all.
Guess you Filipinos never heard of “VPNs”, which makes this whole exercise a mute point. What are these mediocre holding companies, masquerading as Telcos up to next? You just take this stuff….like every other exploitation coming down from the oligarchy? Today it’s pornos, next it’s non-fake news sites.
Kim Jong Un killed his girfriend for porn.
Make sure our gov’t must ban and limit these sites critical to Marcos and Duterte as well.
Think of North Korea’s state-run internet as pure propaganda.
Nobody is taking you seriously since your post is PURE TROLLING.
If you consider sites full of Yellow Propaganda being good, then you need to seek help
Stop being a Yellow cocksucker and set your priorities for once, hypocritical trollfag. Everything you’ve said is pure propaganda; the irony is in your username . :3
You’re out of topic, son. Keep on shitposting, Shitstain Boy. The mods will DELETE your irrelevant spamshit posts. :^)
No, our government will DELETE ours, not even mods or admins.
So do away so PH would have censorship in internet to block Facebook, Youtube just like China did. It would take a time in the future.
We are NOT doing sites of about Yellow or Communist Propaganda. We are saying is that internet would have state and government propaganda (similar way to North Korea, and either way Cuba or China or Eritrea that blocks sites which is not gov’t approved or it would harm the government.
The scenario is that we would have censorship from our future government to be similar way as North Korea or Eritrea or Ethiopia or Cuba.
These loyalists want to crave for another Martial Law and E-Martial Law for propaganda techniques similar to North Korea.
Again with your shitposting, Yellowtard shitstain. Your comments just shows a sign of butthurt. Fact.
@Faggot Boy:
If anything, yours is more like an assumption. And you totally forgot that North Korea is a fully Communist country so your point doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you never went to Singapore. Oh wait…
To forbid Failipinos anything is to make them have a mind for it.
We have to learn from North Korea which internet was only allowed strictly for elites because it’s state-run with pure-propaganda.
Or better yet, we have to learn more how to TROLL and SPAM sites like this and how can we be political turds like yourself.
2.Porn
Alright. No beer, no music, no complaining about the government, no television, no church, no cars, and now no porn? They really do just outlaw being an American over there.
Like everything else, selling or buying pornography can lead to the death sentence. In 2013 Leader Kim Jong-Un had his ex-girlfriend executed in front of her family for making a sex tape.
1.Surfing the Web
And yep. That’s the last thing on the list. Not allowed to be an American in North Korea. Nope.
Not only is North Korea’s internet pure propaganda, but it also requires authorization to access. They take it so seriously over there that an online journalist was imprisoned for six months over a typo.
http://tribunist.com/news/10-north-korean-laws-you-probably-break-every-week-video/
Your irrelevant post doesn’t matter because every post you make here reeks autism. Please reconsider.