MANILA, Philippines - The Senate on Monday passed on final reading a proposed law penalizing cybersex, child pornography on the web, spamming, and other cybercrimes.



Under Senate Bill 2796, people engaging in cybersex-defined as "the willful engagement, maintenance, control, or operation, directly or indirectly, of any lascivious exhibition of sexual organs or sexual activity, with the aid of a computer system"-will be imprisoned for 6 to 12 years or made to pay a fine of P200,000 to P1 million.



Child pornography, meanwhile, carries penalties specified under the Child Pornography Act of 2009.



Spamming, which the bill calls "unsolicited commercial communications," is punishable with imprisonment of 1 to 6 months or a fine of P50,000 to P250,000. It is defined as the "transmission of commercial electronic communication with the use of a computer system which seek to advertise, sell, or offer for sale products."



Aside from these, the proposed measure penalizes libel committed on the Internet.



It also covers the ff. offenses:

a. Illegally accessing a computer system;

b. Intercepting a computer system;

c. Deleting and altering computer data;

d. "cyber-squatting," or acquiring of an Internet domain name in bad faith to profit, mislead, destroy reputations, and prevent others from registering the name, especially if it is identical to an existing trademark or another person;

e. Using and making available devices, software, passwords, and other means for committing cybercrimes;

f. Computer-related forgery, or altering or deleting computer data resulting in inauthentic data;

g. Computer-related fraud, or the unauthorized input, alteration, or deletion of computer data to cause damage with a fraudulent intent;



Furthermore, the bill creates a National Cybersecurity Coordinating Council to formulate and implement the national cybersecurity plan, and monitor cybercrime cases.



The executive director of the Department of Science and Technology's Information and Communications Technology Office will chair it. The members will be the director of the National Bureau of Investigation, the chief of the Philippine National Police, the head of the Department of Justice's Office of Cybercrime, and representatives from the private sector and the academe.



Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, Edgardo Angara, Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, Lito Lapid, Manuel Villar, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Ramon Bong Revilla Jr., and Loren Legarda are the authors of the measure.