What is Cyber Law?
According to Wikipedia, “Cyber law or Internet law is a term that encapsulates the legal issues related to use of the Internet. It is less a distinct field of law than intellectual property or contract law, as it is a domain covering many areas of law and regulation. Some leading topics include internet access and usage, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction”.
In other words, Cyber law can be considered as a part of the overall legal system that deals with the Internet, E-commerce, digital contracts, electronic evidence, cyberspace, and their respective legal issues. Cyber law covers a fairly broad area, encompassing several subtopics including freedom of expression, data protection, data security, digital transactions, electronic communication, access to and usage of the Internet, and online privacy.
The Indian Information Technology Act was passed in 2000 (“IT Act”). On the other hand most of the companies are still uninformed of the strict provisions of the law. The rising use of Information and Communication Technology has given go up to serious compliance concerns, which if unnoticed may attract various civil and criminal sanctions.
All the companies who are connected cyber business are required to fulfill with the requirements of the law. There are quite a few cyber law firms in India that has given so much for the growth and development of cyber law of India.
Importance of Cyberlaw
Cyberlaw is vital because it touches almost all aspects of transactions and behavior on and concerning the Internet, the World Wide Web and Cyberspace. Primarily it may seem that Cyberlaws is a very technical field and that it does not have any attitude to most activities in Cyberspace. But the actual fact is that nothing could be further than the truth. Whether we realise it or not, every work and every reaction in Cyberspace has some legal and Cyber legal perspectives.
India introduced the law recently and every law needs some time to mature and grow. It was understood that over a period of occasion it will produce and further amendments will be bring to make it well-matched with the International standards. It is significant to realize that we need “qualitative law” and not “quantitative laws”.
Such crimes may threaten a nation’s security and financial health. Issues surrounding this type of crime has become high-profile, mainly those surrounding cracking, copyright infringement. There are problems of privacy when private information is lost or intercepted, lawfully or otherwise.
Cyber crimes can involve criminal activities that are traditional in nature, such as fraud, forgery, theft, mischief and defamation all of which are subject to the Indian Penal Code. The abuse of computers has also given birth to a range of new age crimes that are addressed by the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Objectives of IT Act, 2000
- It is objective of I.T. Act 2000 to give legal recognition to any transaction which is done by electronic way or use of internet.
- To give legal recognition to digital signature for accepting any agreement via computer.
- To provide facility of filling document online relating to school admission or registration in employment exchange.
- According to I.T. Act 2000, any company can store their data in electronic storage.
- To stop computer crime and protect privacy of internet users.
- To give legal recognition for keeping books of accounts by bankers and other companies in electronic form.
- To make more power to IPO, RBI and Indian Evidence act for restricting electronic crime.
Three Major Categories of Cyber crimes
Cyber crimes against persons
Crimes that happen in the Cyber space against persons include various crimes such as transmission of child-pornography, cyber harassment, cyber stalking, cyber bullying, cyber defamation, revenge porn, email spoofing, cracking, carding, sms spoofing, pornography, credit card frauds, online libel / slander, cyber smearing, trafficking, financial frauds, identity theft, etc.
Cyber crimes against property
Cyber crimes against property includes computer vandalism, IPR violations, cyber squatting, typo squatting, cyber trespass, DDOS attacks, worm attacks, hacking, transmitting viruses, intellectual property theft, infringement, etc.
Cyber crimes against government
Cyber crimes against government are serious in nature as it is considered as an act of war against the Sovereignty. Cyber crimes such as cyber terrorism, cyber warfare, pirated software, possessing of unauthorised information, hacking into confidential military data are some of the real dangers that Governments face these days.
The various offences related to internet which have been made punishable under the IT Act and the IPC are enumerated below:
1. Cyber crimes under the IT Act, 2000:
- Tampering with Computer source documents – Sec.65
- Hacking with Computer systems, Data alteration – Sec.66
- Publishing obscene information – Sec.67
- Un-authorised access to protected system Sec.70 Breach of Confidentiality and Privacy – Sec.72
- Publishing false digital signature certificates – Sec.73
2. Cyber Crimes under IPC and Special Laws:
- Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sec. 503 – Sending threatening messages by email
- Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sec. 499 – Sending defamatory messages by email
- Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sec. 463 – Forgery of electronic records
- Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sec. 420 – Bogus websites, cyber frauds
- Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sec. 463 – Email spoofing
- Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sec. 383 – Web-Jacking
- Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sec. 500 – E-Mail Abuse
3. Cyber Crimes under the Special Acts:
- Online sale of Arms under Arms Act, 1959
- Online sale of Drugs under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985
