I am Noel Guivani Ramiscal, a Philippine IT Law Evangelist, cyberlawyer with a PhD Law degree from the University of Queensland, Australia; award winning poet and writer; indigenous and cultural rights advocate; world traveler; jewelry co-creator; luxury leather goods designer; gender equality activist of people with alternative sexualities; aspiring djembe drummer; part-time rock vocalist, and so much more! For over a decade, I have chosen wordpress.com as a repository of my thoughts, insights, pictures and records of my activities and reflections on the different realms I inhabit, traipse and value: Law, Information Technology, Fashion, Arts, Culture, Gems, Poetry, Music…This medium offered a way for people in cyberspace to know more about my practice and advocacies, and what’s going on in the relevant Philippine industries that I blog about.
As a regular lecturer on Cyber Ethics for lawyers in the Philippine Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) seminar series mandated by the Philippine Supreme Court (SC) and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), I am well aware and apprise lawyers of the dangers of social media in all its forms. My personal and professional experiences with social media have actually made me wary of using FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, even Linkedin. The way these social media accounts are maintained and operated gave their corporate owners’ ownership of too much personal data of their users, which they commercialize, without practically any liability or accountability to their clients/users/subscribers.
The Alexa and webstat ratings of my cyberlaw website were quite high which apparently made it very profitable, but not for me. All my blogsites are not listed to me. They are owned by wordpress.com. I fully accepted that as the price of free participation in cyberspace.
The wordpress blogs I maintained were my way of using social media in a controlled manner, or so I thought. Then some of the articles and pictures (replete with my digital watermarks), I have posted have been digitally misappropriated and sold by commercial metasites or website aggregators in various ways, without getting my consent. Some of my articles have been plagiarized by researchers, without observing my moral rights, particularly my right of attribution. One other irritating thing I must mention is that inappropriate advertisements have appeared on my blog articles, because that is the way these social media blogsites are ran for profit.
My fifth book, “Cryptology: The Science and Law of Electronic Secrets and Codes” (published in April 2016) focused on the history, developments and applications of the technology of cryptography that actually fuels and secures the blockchain technology, and the platforms and apps built on it. Funded partially by the University of the Philippines Institute of International Legal Studies, I explored the legal implications of cryptography in Australia, United Kingdom, United States of America, and the Wassenaar Arrangement. A major portion of the book was dedicated to the Philippines, with the discussion of software and hardware systems with cryptographic functions, which were used in past automated elections, without any comprehensive examination of their source codes by Philippine legitimate source code reviewers. There was a little bit of discussion on Bitcoins insofar as they appeared in the Philippine horizon and what transpired with the Mt. Gox exchange. It was the first book written by any Philippine author on these matters. While some information is dated, the principles and recommendations I gave are still applicable and relevant for the Philippines today.
In writing my Cryptology book, I was struck and impressed with the idea that the Blockchain as a public ledger of transactions that can be independently verified, can be the ultimate arbiter of what is the Truth about a civil or criminal matter, be it a libelous statement, infringing content, fraudulent transaction or an unconscionable contract, if the questioned information has been made part of the blockchain. Ultimately run by mathematics, there is something comforting in the idea that the trust in this technology is derived from a discipline that is comprised of Universal principles, and for some (like the Phythagoreans) embody the God Idea of Truth.
As an indie artist, cyber lawyer, and creator of content, what is crucial to me, in fact, my sole and foremost consideration, in unleashing my digital creations is the fact that I can control the Integrity of my content, and that I can be assured that the Truth of my creation of that content will be recognized and not be trampled or erased in cyberspace. While I am grateful to wordpress.com, it just does not have that functionality and feature as a service for the community of its bloggers.
I have searched for a platform that will accommodate my concerns, and for now Steemit is IT!
Of course, I have no illusions about the hyped up talks and articles about earning realtime currency from the utilization of the Steemit blockchain. The chance to earn was, and is also a possibility with wordpress.com in its ads model. In my decade old wordpress.com blogging, I have not earned (or even tried to) earn money from the generation of ads.
What I truly expect to get from my Steemit blog is the support, feedback, and responsible curation from fellow bloggers about the concerns, insights, ideas and pictures I post, and I will strive to do the same for them. Viewing some of the blogs posted in this community and the feedbacks are quite inspiring. I did not get that from wordpress.com. But for accessibility concerns of my wordpress.com readers, I am retaining my wordpress.com blogs for now, and maybe keep them as forms of mirror sites for my steemit articles.
So I trust, I would be hearing from you, and you would be hearing from me soon!
Thank you!
