With the growing popularity of
the Internet, the business of being an ISP is becoming more and more onerous.
ISP s in India today provide services to the Consumers and are covered
by the Consumer Protection Act. Their services should therefore be as
per the agreed terms failing which they are liable to compensate the consumer
for any loss or damage suffered by them.
Unfortunately, the ISP s are
today oblivious of their responsibilities to its consumers and are taking
advantage of the ignorance in the market place. If only, the legal
professionals who are well-versed in Consumer interest litigation also acquire
some knowledge of the Cyber World and the Cyber Laws, there may be many
opportunities for them to hoist cases against erring ISP s so that the service
levels can improve.
One of the recent examples of
such an attitude is the arbitrary manner in which some ISP s (e.g.: Dishnet
DSL, Chennai) have decided to tackle the problem of virus in the mails. Some
time during the last month, the Dishnet servers were affected ostensibly by
the virus movement in the mails going through the mail servers. The service
was shut down and was un available for a long time and the customers
were not able to send any mails through the server. The Company did not think
it was necessary to inform the customers about the break in service. Many of
the customers observed that their outward mails were either not delivered at
all or was delivered after a day's delay.
This problem of delayed
despatch of the mails continued for more than a week and the undersigned lost
his articles sent to a news paper for publication since they were delayed
beyond the deadlines for publication.
On enquiry, it was found that the ISP had been picking the
mails and quarantining in a separate place, running it through a virus scan
and then releasing it out....much the same way the airport authorities deal
with unclaimed baggage suspected to contain explosives.
However considering the criticality of the e-mail as a
service, it was clear that the ISP was exposing itself to a risk of being
hauled up to pay damages to the customers for not delivering the mails on time
and compounding it further by not keeping the customers informed about the
problem. Had it been a legal system like USA, several suits would have now
been filed against the ISP.
Recently the ISP seems to have introduced a content
filtering system which filters out the e-mails that are suspected to contain
viruses. The fact that a message ahs been filtered out is being sent to the
customers but without adequate information.
It also appears that the filtering software can send false
alarms filtering out messages which may not contain virus. The company
has no system of advising the customer of the type of virus that was
identified because of which the content was filtered out.
Considering that deliberate distribution of virus is a
legal offence in India and most of the observed instances are from users who
have not detected a virus or who themselves are a victim of virus
infection from outside, Dishnet appears to be taking law into their own hands
by resorting to un announced content filtration. If Dishnet is to be of
service to its customers, it should stop at protecting itself and sending
virus alerts to the sender with full information about the type of virus
detected.
In case, Dishnet continues to arbitrarily exercise Content
filtering as they seem to be doing now, Cyber Lawyers in Chennai may
soon find an excellent business opportunity in claiming damages from
Dishnet on behalf of its clients.
Naavi
January 16, 2002.