REPUBLIC ACT 8792 of June 14, 2000

AN ACT PROVIDING AND USE OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCIAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS, PENALTIES FOR UNLAWFUL USE THEREOF, AND OTHER PURPOSES.

Overview

The advent of new technologies like the internet and the world wide web (www), introduces numerous opportunities of new ways of communicating and transacting business, but also numerous ways and complex challenges in making sure that this technology is properly utilized and will not harm other people.

This act, through the unsolicited help of the “love bug” virus, created by a Filipino student that infected some critical institutions in the United States, including the Department of Defense of the United states, was hastily written and enacted upon by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Philippines in response to the pressure from the United States. This facilitates the (1)imposition of criminal charges to hackers and/or rogue programmers who ply the world wide web and inflict damage to systems worldwide, (2) protects the intellectual property rights of software developers, thus, reduces or at most, eradicates software piracy in the Philippines, and (3)provides a healthy environment in doing electronic commerce.

Critique

In Chapter II, Section 7. Legal Recognition of Electronic documents, it clearly stated that electronic documents shall have the legal effect, validity or enforceability as any other document or legal writing if the said document maintains its integrity and reliability and can be authenticated so as to be usable for subsequent reference. How can we assure integrity and reliability then? In Section 8, the law provided a method of providing authenticity through the use of electronic signature. But the law did not provided specific details about the criteria and standards required to assure reliability.

In Section 11, (a) it says, “By evidence that at all material times the information and communication system or other similar device was operating in a manner that did not affect the integrity of the electronic data message or electronic document, and there are no other reasonable grounds to doubt the integrity of the information and communication system.” The “other reasonable grounds” exhibits some form of doubts regarding the authenticity of electronic documents which are supposedly assured of reliability and validity methods provided by the law. This means that in a legal court, electronic documents that serves as evidence would be scrutinized and would be negatively accepted even after assuring that indeed, it is authentic since, the law did not provide details and standard operating procedures on how to validate the authenticity of electronic documents.

In Section 27. Government Use of Electronic Date Messages, Electronic documents and Electronic Signatures. Within (2) years from the date of the effectivity of this Act, all government institutions were supposedly be doing their businesses in the form of electronic data messages or electronic documents. This has not materialized due to the cancellation of the Nationwide broadband Network (ZTE deal) due to graft and corruption even before the project started. Therefore, this Act remains ineffectively since it cannot be implemented fully without the existence of nationwide broadband network.

Another flaw of the Republic Act 8792 is the lack of provisions on tax monitoring of online businesses. Maybe the government intentionally decided not include this since with the current methods that the Bureau of Internal Revenue have is not sufficient to properly monitor online transactions. The government should formulate methods that online sales could be monitored. Online businesses should also secure permit from Securities and Exchange Commission. These could only be realized if the government is fully computerized.

Conclusion

The act of ensuring the validity and reliability of electronic data messages, electronic documents, and electronic transactions thru e-commerce is but futile without a dedicated network like the proposed nationwide broadband network. It would be difficult for us to secure data and information using a public network like the world wide web where hackers and rogue programmers are always lurking. In fact big companies around the world do not rely on the internet and world wide web in doing their electronic communications and transactions. They have provided themselves dedicated facilities (e.g. satellites or networks) which are more secured. It is difficult to impose a law on electronic commerce, etc.., if the technology is not yet in place in the first place.