Monday, April 13, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Republic of the Philippines
Congress of the Philippines
Metro Manila
Eleventh Congress
Second Regular Session
Begun and held in Metro Manila, on Monday, the twenty-sixth day of July, nineteen hundred and ninety-nine.
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REPUBLIC ACT NO. 8792
AN ACT PROVIDING FOR THE RECOGNITION AND USE OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCIAL AND NON -COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS AND DOCUMENTS, PENALTIES FOR UNLAWFUL USE THEREOF AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines in Congress assembled:
PART ISHORT TITLE AND DECLARATION OF POLICY
Sec. 1. Short Title. - This Act shall be known as the "Electronic Commerce Act of 2000".
Sec. 2. Declaration of Policy. - The State recognizes the vital role of information and communications technology (ICT) in nation-building; the need to create an information-friendly environment which supports and ensures the availability, diversity and affordability of ICT products and services; the primary responsibility of the private sector in contributing investments and services in telecommunications and information technology; the need to develop, with appropriate training programs and institutional policy changes, human resources for the information technology age, a labor force skilled in the use of ICT and a population capable of operating and utilizing electronic appliances and computers; its obligation to facilitate the transfer and promotion of adaptation technology, to ensure network security, connectivity and neutrality of technology for the national benefit; and the need to marshal, organize and deploy national information infrastructures, comprising in both telecommunications network and strategic information services, including their interconnection to the global information networks, with the necessary and appropriate legal, financial, diplomatic and technical framework, systems and facilities.
Ethics of Information Technology
-Ethics and Information Technology
Much of the ethical debate about computers and information technology more generally has been informed by the ‘impact view’ of information technology. Within this tradition a number of issues have emerged as important. For example, whether computers generate new types of ethical problems that require new or different ethical theories or whether it is just more of the same (Gorniak 1996). These debates are often expressed in the language of the impact of information technology on particular values and rights (Johnson 1985, 1994). Thus, we have discussions on the impact of CCTV or web cookies on the right to privacy, the impact of the digital divide on the right to access information, the impact of the piracy of software on property rights, and so forth. In these debates Jim Moor (1985) has argued that computers show up policy vacuums that require new thinking and the establishment of new policies. Others have argued that the resources provided by classical ethical theory such as utilitarianism, consequentialism and deontological ethics is more than enough to deal with all the ethical issues emerging from our design and use of information technology (Gert 1999). Irrespective of whether information technology creates new types of ethical problems that require new ethical theory or whether established ethical theory is sufficient, one tends to find the debate centered on questions of policy that is intended to regulate or justify conduct. These policies are seen, and presented as ways to regulate or balance competing rights or competing values. For example, what sort of policies do we need to protect our children when they go on the internet? How would these policies affect the right to free speech? Or, what sort of policies do we need to secure the rights of producers of digital products? How would these policies affect the right of society to a reasonable access to these products? Furthermore, these debates are most often directed at an institutional level of discourse—i.e., with the intention to justify the policies or conduct for governments, organizations and individuals. In these debates, on the impact of technology, ethics and ethicists are primarily conceived as presenting arguments for justifying a particular balance, of values or rights, over and against other possibilities.
