Luardo Law Office

10/01/2015

"Healthy societies. . . don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semirespect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct.

"The massacre at Charlie Hebdo should be an occasion to end speech codes. And it should remind us to be legally tolerant toward offensive voices, even as we are socially discriminating."

The attack in France reminds us to look closely at our own speech codes, and to remember that offensive speech should be discouraged socially but never legally.

03/10/2014

"[T]he Philippine bar exam is the most difficult in the world—for all the wrong reasons." - Prof. O. F. Tan

This week, another batch of law students will have wasted an extra year of their lives to study for the month-long bar exam. This is in addition to four years of law school where every moment was defined by the bar. It is high time the Philippines got rid of its unique obsession with what was suppos…

18/06/2014

"The line between art and po*******hy will always be indeterminate given society’s changing tastes, but free speech demands that we suffer a little po*******hy rather than risk losing a little art." - Professor Oscar Franklin Tan

Does the uproar over the n**e-painting challenge of “Pinoy Big Brother” defend women from exploitation? Or does it entrench a superficial modesty to the detriment of both women and art? The furor is sadly one-sided and uncritical, with PBB publicly apologizing in the face of the religion and moralit…

01/05/2014

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/30/opinion/randazza-sterling-privacy/index.html

Marc Randazza says recording and leaking private speech portends a chilling future without privacy. Shouldn't we condemn that along with Sterling's racism?

02/10/2012

"Quite simply, the cybercrime law is a cure that’s worse than the disease."

I’m glad several senators have bestirred themselves to try to undo the harm they did for voting for the Cybercrime Prevention bill. That piece of legislation earned the ire of netizens and media practitioners alike, as seen in editorials and widespread sentiment in social media condemning it. Teofis...

20/09/2012

"[T]he new provision [on online libel] is deeply, radically, unconstitutional.

The new Cybercrime Prevention Act, signed into law by President Aquino on Sept. 12, takes the dangerously outmoded provisions on libel in the Revised Penal Code—and dumps them online. Without any legislative debate, without any public hearing, indeed with hardly anyone looking, these libel provision...

09/09/2012

"This man is so ridiculous, he is almost impossible to ridicule."

Cretins are annoying, yes, but there are deeper problems in our politics to get worked up about: abuse of power, impunity and dishonesty, for example

21/08/2012

The exchanges are getting very interesting here...

21/08/2012

, Jesse...

rappler's photo on Instagram

20/08/2012

"Unless you copyrighted it, anyone can copy it."

-- Thesis of Senate President Enrile, in defense of the plagiarism committed by Senator Tito Sotto of the work of an American blogger

Really???

Copyright Law 101:

§172.1 of RA 8293, or the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines, states: "[O]riginal intellectual creations in the literary and artistic domain [are] protected from the moment of their creation."

§172.2 of the law further provides: "Works are protected by the sole fact of their creation, irrespective of their mode or form of expression, as well as of their content, quality and purpose."

Apparently, Manong Johnny miss the point of the Sotto plagiarism issue. Or maybe, he has not brushed up on his IP Law.

Which is it, ANTI-RH apologists? :D

19/08/2012

Oxymoron of the day: "Intellectual dishonesty," in reference to Tito Sotto's turno en contra speech against the RH bill.

Dishonesty, yes; but intellectual (i.e., relating to the intellect or its use)? Er, what? HARDLY.

Giving precedence to his personal loss over those of [countless] others and using his personal circumstances as arguments for an issue of national significance and which ha[s] grave impact on the lives of millions of [Filipino] women is anything but intellectual. It is a fallacious appeal to emotion.

His only lame attempt at an intellectual discourse is his use of plagiarized pseudo-science as justification for his opposition to the RH bill. Plagiarism + pseudo-science = DOUBLE WHAMMY to the Filipino people.

DOUBLE FAIL. Double facepalm, Senator!

The national discussion on the reproductive health bill has made a turn for the worse with the recent verbal diarrhea of Senator Vicente Sotto III. Not only has the discussion turned deeply personal, it has also become an exercise in intellectual dishonesty.