Cyber law India is an organization that is dedicated to the passing of relevant and dynamic Cyber laws in India. Considering India is one of the biggest economies impacting electronic commerce and the biggest markets to target, it is but natural to accept that India should have in place appropriate enabling legal provisions for effective and secure cyber transactions. Cyber law India as an organization has been active since late 1990’s in India. Cyber law India was responsible for conducting various programmers directing at creating more awareness about the needs for Cyber law in India.The Information Technology Bill 1999 when presented in Parliament was appropriately analyzed at Cyber law India. Mr.
Pavan Duggal, President, Cyber law India, was responsible for demonstrating various draw backs and lacuna of the said legislation. After the passage of the Indian Information Technology Act 2000, Cyber law India was engaged in initiatives, programmes and events that were targeting at creating more awareness amongst the relevant stake holders about the Indian Cyber law namely the Information Technology Act 2000, its salient features and how the said law impacts their day to day operation.Cyber law India has been in the forefront of creating more awareness about effectively strengthening the law impacting Internet and computers within India. The Government of India had tabled the Information Technology Amendment Bill of 2006 before Parliament. The Parliament referred the said Bill to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for its comments.
Cyber law India was once again responsible for creating awareness about the new proposed amendments to the Information Technology Act 2000 in India. The Government of India passed the Information Technology Amendment Act of 2008 in December 2008.The said legislation has become law with effect from 5th of February 2009. Cyber law India has been in the forefront of creating more awareness about the new amendments to the Information Technology Act 2000 and their ramifications and impact upon all relevant stake holders and corporate world. Cyber law India believes that India must have the best cyber legal regime in the world. Cyber law Association aims to contribute to the ever evolving cyber legal jurisprudence and emerging legal issues pertaining to Cyberspace, Internet and the World Wide Web.
Cyber law Association is a not for profit association that was found more than a decade ago to encourage the growth of Cyber law in different jurisdictions. It was also initially devised to be meeting point of all related similar thinking individuals and legal entities who had an interest in the evolution, growth and development of Cyber Law, and Cyber Law legal jurisprudence. Cyber Law Association is the common meeting point of legal professionals, scholars, jurists and other stakeholders who all are committed to the growth of cyber law and cyber legal jurisprudence. What is Cyber law?Internet is believed to be full of anarchy and a system of law and regulation therein seems contradictory. However, cyberspace is being governed by a system of law and regulation called Cyber law.
There is no one exhaustive definition of the term "Cyber law". Simply speaking, Cyber law is a generic term which refers to all the legal and regulatory aspects of Internet and the World Wide Web. Anything concerned with or related to or emanating from any legal aspects or issues concerning any activity of netizens and others, in Cyberspace comes within the ambit of Cyber law.The growth of Electronic Commerce has propelled the need for vibrant and effective regulatory mechanisms which would further strengthen the legal infrastructure, so crucial to the success of Electronic Commerce. All these regulatory mechanisms and legal infrastructures come within the domain of Cyber law. What is the importance of Cyber law? Cyber law is important because it touches almost all aspects of transactions and activities on and concerning the Internet, the World Wide Web and Cyberspace.
Initially it may seem that Cyber laws are a very technical field and that it does not have any bearing to most activities in Cyberspace. But the actual truth is that nothing could be further than the truth. Whether we realize it or not, every action and every reaction in Cyberspace has some legal and Cyber legal perspectives. Need for Cyber Law There are various reasons why it is extremely difficult for conventional law to cope with cyberspace. Some of these are discussed below.
1. Cyberspace is an intangible dimension that is impossible to govern and regulate using conventional law. 2. Cyberspace has complete disrespect for jurisdictional boundaries. A person in India could break into a bank’s electronic vault hosted on a computer in USA and transfer millions of Rupees to another bank in Switzerland, all within minutes.
All he would need is a laptop computer and a cell phone. 3. Cyberspace handles gigantic traffic volumes every second. Billions of emails are crisscrossing the globe even as we read this, millions of websites are being accessed every minute and billions of dollars are electronically transferred around the world by banks every day.
4. Cyberspace is absolutely open to participation by all. A ten year- old in Bhutan can have a live chat session with an eight year- old in Bali without any regard for the distance or the anonymity between them. 5. Cyberspace offers enormous potential for anonymity to its members.
Readily available encryption software and steganography tools that seamlessly hide information within image and sound files ensure the confidentiality of information exchanged between cyber-citizens.6. Cyberspace offers never-seen-before economic efficiency. Billions of dollars’ worth of software can be traded over the Internet without the need for any government licenses, shipping and handling charges and without paying any customs duty. 7.
Electronic information has become the main object of cybercrime. It is characterized by extreme mobility, which exceeds by far the mobility of persons, goods or other services. International computer networks can transfer huge amounts of data around the globe in a matter of seconds. 8. A software source code worth crores of rupees or a movie can be pirated across the globe within hours of their release.9.
Theft of corporeal information (e. g. books, papers, CD ROMs, floppy disks) is easily covered by traditional penal provisions. However, the problem begins when electronic records are copied quickly, inconspicuously and often via telecommunication facilities. Here the “original” information, so to say, remains in the “possession” of the “owner” and yet information gets stolen.
What is Cybercrime? When Internet was developed, the founding fathers of Internet hardly had any inclination that Internet could also be misused for criminal activities. Today, there are many disturbing things happening in cyberspace.Cybercrime refers to all the activities done with criminal intent in cyberspace. These could be either the criminal activities in the conventional sense or could be activities, newly evolved with the growth of the new medium. Because of the anonymous nature of the Internet, it is possible to engage into a variety of criminal activities with impunity and people with intelligence, have been grossly misusing this aspect of the Internet to perpetuate criminal activities in cyberspace. The field of Cybercrime is just emerging and new forms of criminal activities in cyberspace are coming to the forefront with the passing of each new day.
What are the various categories of Cybercrimes? Cybercrimes can be basically divided into 3 major categories being Cybercrimes against persons, property and Government. What is Cybercrimes against persons? Cybercrimes committed against persons include various crimes like transmission of child-pornography, harassment of any one with the use of a computer such as e-mail, and cyber-stalking. The trafficking, distribution, posting, and dissemination of obscene material including pornography, indecent exposure, and child pornography, constitutes one of the most important Cybercrimes known today.The potential harm of such a crime to humanity can hardly be overstated. This is one Cybercrime which threatens to undermine the growth of the younger generation as also leave irreparable scars and injury on the younger generation, if not controlled.
What are Cybercrimes against property? The second category of Cybercrimes is that of Cybercrimes against all forms of property. These crimes include unauthorized computer trespassing through cyberspace, computer vandalism, transmission of harmful programs, and unauthorized possession of computerized information. Is hacking a Cybercrime?Hacking and cracking are amongst the gravest Cybercrimes known till date. It is a dreadful feeling to know that a stranger has broken into your computer systems without your knowledge and consent and has tampered with precious confidential data and information.
Coupled with this, the actuality is that no computer system in the world is hacking proof. It is unanimously agreed that any and every system in the world can be hacked. The recent denial of service attacks seen over the popular commercial sites like E-bay, Yahoo, Amazon and others are a new category of Cybercrimes which are slowly emerging as being extremely dangerous.Using one's own programming abilities as also various programmes with malicious intent to gain unauthorized access to a computer or network are very serious crimes. Similarly, the creation and dissemination of harmful computer programs or virii which do irreparable damage to computer systems is another kind of Cybercrime.
Software piracy is also another distinct kind of Cybercrime which is perpetuated by many people online who distribute illegal and unauthorized pirated copies of software.What is Cybercrime against Government? The third category of Cybercrimes relate to Cybercrimes against Government. Cyber Terrorism is one distinct kind of crime in this category. The growth of Internet has shown that the medium of Cyberspace is being used by individuals and groups to threaten the international governments as also to terrorize the citizens of a country.
This crime manifests itself into terrorism when an individual "cracks" into a government or military maintained website.
