Discord is open to appointing a Philippine law firm to represent its interests in the country, provided the arrangement meets the requirements of proposed regulations governing online platforms.
The issue was discussed during a meeting on Thursday, Oct. 22, between Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) officials led by executive director Renato “Aboy” Paraiso and Discord senior public policy advisor for Asia-Pacific Vasundhara Singh at the CICC headquarters in Quezon City.
Singh visited Manila following Discord’s commitment to work with the Philippine government on online child safety and efforts to address online sexual abuse or exploitation of children (OSAEC) and nihilistic violence extremism.
During the meeting, Singh discussed options for local representation in response to the CICC’s request and proposed legislation in Congress.
She said the government should distinguish between requiring a local legal representative and mandating a physical office in the Philippines.
“If the local presence is sufficient, we already spoke to your office, and we’re happy to find a law firm that represents us, as we’ve done in Korea, Japan, a lot of these countries,” said Singh.
She said the appropriate arrangement would depend on the government’s objectives, particularly the need to ensure that technology companies can respond to official requests and urgent concerns.
Paraiso, however, said a local representative must have the authority to make decisions on significant or urgent matters rather than serve merely as a contact point.
“If we’re gearing towards not setting up a Philippine office, not a physical office, but more of a Philippine representative, it has to have some sort of power and discretion to decide over various issues that are, like I said, imminent, crucial, or difficult,” noted Paraiso.
The discussion also covered the potential impact of uniform local presence requirements on technology companies of different sizes.
Singh cautioned that requiring all platforms to establish physical offices could disproportionately burden smaller technology businesses and startups.
She said regulations should consider differences in companies’ operations and resources while ensuring they can respond to government requests.
The specific requirements for Discord’s Philippine representation will depend on the final wording of the proposed legislation and the obligations imposed on covered platforms.
