At the end of the year 2001, India has completed more than 14 months
after the Information Technology Act-2000 was passed. Normally this should
have been sufficient time for the roll out of the implementation of the Cyber Laws envisaged
under the Act..
However, as on date, not a single Certifying Authority has been licensed
in India. Consequently, no legally valid digital signatures can be obtained nor
used in the country.
The Controler of Certifying Authorities is in place but the Cyber Regulations
Appelate Tribunal is yet to be appointed anywhere in India. No adjudicator
has also been appointed under the Act for any case.
The amendments necessary to correct some mistakes in the drafting of
the Act are also pending.
Consequently, it may be said with a heavy heart that the Cyber Law regime
in India is still not in place in spite of the urgent need. The Controller Mr K.N.Gupta has taken many initiatives to
correct the situation including setting up a IT Policy Legal Advisory Group (Of which Naavi
is a privileged member).It is however not clear if the inter departmental coordination between the
law ministry and the IT ministry needs to be sharpened for some quick action.
The only recognition of the existence of the Cyber law in India
came from the Police filing a few cases under the ITA-2000. The most dramatic of the cases was the
case of the Bal Bharati Airforce School in Delhi where a 16 year boy was
arrested and rusticated from the school for obscene writings on a web site.
(Details
here)
Yet another aborted attempt to use the law was in the arrest of the
two directors of a Web hosting firm under "Hacking" when they disabled
the web site of a client for a dispute on payment. (Details
Here)
While actions initiated by the Police against many Cyber cafe's were also
a cause of concern to many(Details
here), Indian Police also scored some credit when they succesfully investigated
a Bomb hoax (Details
here) sent through an e-mail in Delhi by an officer of a foreign Bank.
The opening of the Cyber crime cells in many states such as Maharashtra,
and Karnataka as well as the CBI were other important steps that the Police
took during the year to equip themselves for battling the Cyber crimes.
In the domain name front there was the case of the Maruti Software Pvt
Ltd, a company in Delhi which succesfully appealed against a WIPO order
transfering the domain name www.marutionline.com to the Car maker, Maruti
Udyog Ltd. (Details
here).
One of the main policy initiatives taken during the year was the Internet
Banking guidelines introduced by RBI.(Details
Here). This provided for a specific role for "Ethical Hackers" in the
country for the first time.
One of the main events of the year was the tabling of the Communication
Convergence Bill in the Parliament. The Bill at one time threatened to
destroy the Internet in India but fortunately the offending clauses were
removed in the subsequent draft. However, the merger of the two ministries
Telecom and IT whichhve been brought under the leadership of
Mr Pramod Mahajan, could be termed as the most important
Cyber Law event of the year.
Issues that also need further attention are the increasing incidence
of Cyber terrorism and growth of hate sites. E-Commerce taxtion is another
aspect that needs some urgent attention. At the same time, over regulation
in the area of Copyright law for digital medium needs to be avoided and
possibility of introducing Patents for web utilities and software in India
needs to be debated.
There are some encouraging signs of adoption of E-Governance from many
state Governments and this is likely to bring the benefits of the digital
revolution to the common man. For these initiatives to succeed, there is
a need that regulations and cyber law should support wide spread
use of digital communication by the common man rather than restricting
him through a fear of an unknown legal implication.
Obviously there is a lot to be achieved in making people aware of the
Cyber Laws in the country and here-in lies the need to take steps to encourge
Cyber Law education. We hope that the efforts of Naavi's Cyber Law College.com
would be a significant contribution in this direction
from naavi.org and Naavi.
Naavi
Decemebr 26, 2001
Also
read a review of developments in USA for 2001
