User-Generated Porn (UGP) is a product that beckons hordes to DVD stalls for copies of amateur, cell phone-shot sleaze starring the popular, the potentially popular and even the obscure. As long as there’s skin, never mind if the lighting is unflattering, or if the shot is not one’s best angle. UGP is easy to make, so easy that many of them are produced unintentionally, unknowingly or often against will. And the sooner they get to the wrong hands, the faster they make virtual circulation, hitting Quiapo, the free port of pirates in no time.
Video sharing and social sites, YouTube and Facebook help advertise UGP. Shout outs and links spread in a matter of clicks, resulting in instant box office successes such as the latest (and what I'd call) “The Hayden Kho M.D. skin flick franchise”. News media reinforcement by broadsheets, TV and radio also leaves the public with nothing else to talk about but Hayden’s conquests, pushing demand for more collectors’ copies.But Dr. Hayden Kho’s “expose” has one redeeming value. It made people angry. The palace and senate are now scenes of seething government officials taking turns condemning the sex scandal and its executive producer. They want Kho’s medical license revoked. Women’s groups and parents also joined calls for stiffer penalties against internet porn offenders, which is really what the country lacks.
All that exists in the Philippines is a generic (and largely, impotent) anti pornography legislation, which was crafted in the time when offenders were limited to a minority of film makers that show porn in dilapidated theaters (or via the defunct Betamax). That’s why a feisty Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. took the cudgels for Hayden Kho’s victims. He really wants to rally support for his fortified and broadened Anti Pornography Bill, and for good reason. Those who have published, broadcast or exhibited porn through media, internet and phones in the past, got away with mere slaps on the wrist, and maybe a bruised reputation. Hardly any one of them did jail time. Lawmakers also mull outright internet content censorship, a subject of more debate. 
The Philippines has been struggling with managing online liberties unlike its neighbors in the region. The National Information Technology Environments on Business review by American University’s Bree Conally says, the Philippines once supported proposals for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to collectively regulate member nations’ internet communication, spurred by Singapore’s Internet Code of Practice in 1996. But this was met with heavy criticism back home, citing content restrictions violate freedom of speech and expression.I agree. Internet censorship to a certain degree, encroaches on civil liberties already guaranteed by our constitution. Internet content is also subjective, hence censorship will be both work and debate-intensive. We also lack enforcers who have the will (or credibility) to enforce.
If censorship is the only way, anything short of the iron hand resolve of countries like China and Saudi Arabia in regulating internet content will not stop the proliferation of User Generated Pornography in RP.
The next best thing? We become a nation of responsible internet users. Why not? It's simplistic, but I'd take that any day over censorship. It’s really a pity that many Filipinos do not appreciate the small privileges that come with a more liberal internet environment. Almost half of the world whose censorship laws are stiffer, can only dream of the wealth of information (and resources) at the click of the mouse in the Philippines.
