Seminar on Cyber Law Awareness at Mangalore

A workshop on `Cyber Law awareness' was held on Monday February 19 at SDM Law College.Cyber College Chennai director Na Vijayashankar who inaugurated the event said that an IT boom in Mangalore would require ensuring that its information assets should be safe.  The programme was a curtain raiser for the Certificate Course in Cyber Laws which is being conducted by SDM Law College in association with Cyber Law College. This is the fourth center in Karnataka (after Bangalore, Hubli and Mysore) in which Cyber Law College is conducting Courses in Cyber Laws in India. Report in Daijiworld : Picture by Satish Ira: Courtesy Daijiworld : Report in mangalorean.com : Report in Indian Express: Police told to acquire knowledge in cyber law

Strange Things in the Digital Era

It was recently reported that an unusual phenomenon was observed in the efforts of the Dredging Corporation of India in carrying out its operations near Rameshwaram where the legend says that Lord Rama crossed over to Sri Lanka on the bridge constructed by his army as per the epic Ramayana.  A Podcast explaining the sinking of a ship etc is available here. According to believers, Lord Hanuman is suppsoed to be guarding the bridge and the observations seem to support this faith.

In the meantime another friend of mine has brought to our attention that there is a Tipu Sultan Throne in Karnataka which is reported to carry its own legend. It is said that anybody who photographs the throne is in for trouble. My friend who is a current generation IT specialist and naturally a rationalist of the modern era reports that he lost five cameras all of which went beyond repair when he tried to photograph the throne. He also narrates that some others also had similar experiences.

It is interesting to note how Insurance Companies confronted with such incidents would deal with the loss of the assets not explicable by any lawful reasoning. Perhaps there are many such enigmas of the Meta society which seem to put digital world enigmas that confront the judiciary and the police in dealing with Cyber Law problems such as the "Vanishing E-Mails", "Auto refreshing content" "Text that is machine readable and not human readable", "Virtual Property Lost in the Linden City" etc.

Naavi Cricket Rating is Back !!

Today, Naavi is known as  a man with a mission to spread Cyber Law Awareness and in some circles as the "Cyber Law Guru of India" an image cultivated during the last 9 years of his work in the field of Cyber Laws. But behind this current image is a man with a keen interest in Cricket and with several years in the field of Marketing and brand promotion particularly in financial products. It was during those days in 1999 that Naavi had developed an interesting rating concept for Cricket performance particularly during closed tournaments like World Cup. Thus Naavi Cricket Rating was born in 1999 and had a more than expected response from discerning cricket lovers in the world when the rating was unveiled over the Internet. As a refreshing diversion from his hectic Cyber Law Education activities, Naavi intends to bring back the glory of the Innovative Naavi Cricket Rating during the forthcoming world cup in March. Though this is off-topic for the visitors of this site, hopefully many would share my personal liking for Cricket and an attempt at a scientific evaluation of performances. I hope they would enjoy the results of the rating that would be announced on the site.  If any marketer is interested in making commercial use of the rating, suitable promotional programmes can also be designed and executed. Comments, suggestions and assistance in calculation or use of ratings from any of the visitors is welcome.. Details

Blocking of Internet Telephony Sites by ISPs

Dr Arun Mehta is a highly respected veteran Internet technologist in India who is looked upon as a father figure when it comes to following Internet developments in India. Dr Arun Mehta is always in the forefront when it comes to protecting  Netizen's rights. True to his tradition, he had taken up a fight against VSNL's efforts to block Internet Telephony service provider's websites.

The dispute is now due to come up for hearing shortly and there would be a debate on "Free Speech" on the Internet. ..More information is available through the links available here.

Tata Indicom A Rip Van Winkle on the Prowl

Tata Indicom which took over VSNL and then the Dishnet DSL Broadband Internet services is trying to fleece Internet users by charging them for services not rendered. Naavi.org has come across the case of a customer who discontinued the services of Tata Indicom and switched over to Air Tel  after advising Tata Indicom to discontinue its service. Though no charges were made for nearly an year there after, suddenly Tata Indicom has shot off a bill during current month demanding payment of monthly charges and threatening disconnection. It appears that Tata Indicom is living in a world of its own when it comes to customer service. Hope the senior executives will take suitable steps to smoothly discontinue their services to all those who volunteer to exit from its outdated service. In this connection it would be interesting for readers to study the litigation being pursued by the veteran Internet Technologist in India namely Dr Arun Mehta.

Belgian Court Rules Against Google in Copyright Case

In what could be called the clash of two societies, the digital and the meta societies, the Belgian court has ruled that publishing snippets and cache of news reports by Google during its search and index process is a violation of Copyright law. However the court has not taken into consideration the fact that the News papers who donot want to be indexed can achieve their objective by blocking the search engine with appropriate coding of their pages. This further highlights the need to develop separate "Fair Use" Practice for the Digital world.

The proposed amendments to Indian Copyright Act section 52 incorporating the clause " the transient and incidental storage of a work or performance purely in the technical process of electronic transmission or communication to the public" is a "Fair Use" perhaps a provision that satisfies the need for such a new thinking.

Related Article in techliberation.com

Mashelkar's Report and the threatening IPR Regime

Using experts to develop reports based on which laws are amended to suit vested interests is an old ploy of the scheming business people. Naavi.org has discussed at length how the interests of baazee.com was sought to be served by the amendments to Information Technology Act 2000. Now it appears that yet another "Expert Committee" report namely the "Mashelkar's report" is being used to make amendments to Patent Law in India which could turn out to be detrimental to the interests of the common people in India..... More

Nasscom to set up a Self Regulatory Body for IT Industry (120207)

It is reported that Nasscom will be setting up a Self Regulatory Body (SRO) for the IT and ITES industry to address with issues such as data security etc. . It is expected that the SRO will have a much larger scope than data security. There is a speculation in the market that the SRO is likely to be headed by an executive from the MCIT and could be the industry pressure group against the Cyber Security Group which is likely to be lead by the intelligence services (NTRO) through the PMO.

Mumbai Police May Be Wrong !!

An employee of VSNL is reported to have forwarded e-mails meant for staffers only to outsiders causing loss of Rs 8.7 lakhs to customers. Police in Mumbai appear to have concluded that there are no offences made out in ITA 2000 in this regard. Perhaps they have not fully explored the depth of section 66 which covers "Wrongful loss to any person" due to "diminishing in the value of information residing inside a computer". A confidential mail intentionally sent to a person not authorized to view the same could be considered as satisfying the requirement of "Diminishing the value". If such an act is done at the instance of the receiver, perhaps the case does rest on the receiver too.  Report in TOI : Report in ibnlive

Unauthorised Access.. an analysis by Apar Gupta (080207)

In cyberspace when an unauthorized user gains access to data contained in computer, computer system or computer network, the consequences can be diverse and devastating for the data subjects. ...To redress this, Section 43(a) provides for penalties for when a person without authorisation, “accesses or secures access to such computer, computer system or computer network”...more

You Tube served with 1 lakh notices

In a sign of the growing tension between old-line media and the new Internet behemoths, Viacom, the parent company of MTV and Comedy Central, demanded yesterday that YouTube, the video-sharing Web site owned by Google, remove more than 100,000 clips of its programming.

As it has with the similar request from other companies, Google removed the Viacom clips from the You Tube site on 2nd February 2007.... Report in nytimes.com

Cyber Law Quiz at Nitte

Nitte may be a small and far away place compared to the cities such as Bangalore which have gained reputation as the Silicon valley of India. But Nitte carved out a place for itself in the history of Cyber Law Education in India by becoming perhaps the first place where an exclusive Cyber Law Quiz was conducted. Naavi, Director of Cyber Law College, conducted the Cyber Law Quiz at the NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte, a leading Engineering College in Karnataka for the faculty members of Engineering Colleges and a group of Police officers. The quiz was sponsored by Infosys. About 34 faculty members of Engineering colleges and 16 Police officers from the region participated in the quiz. and  The quiz was conducted as part of the 3 day workshop on Cyber Laws conducted under the TEQUIP programme.