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Advantages Of Cyber Laws & Need For Cyber Law

In Indian law, Cyber crime has to be voluntary, an act or omission that adversely affects a person or property. The cyber laws provide the backbone for e-commerce and India’s approach has been to look at e-governance and e-commerce primarily from the promotional aspects looking at the vast opportunities and the need to sensitize the population to the possibilities of the information age. There is the need to take in to consideration the security aspects. The latest statics also shows the steep increase in various types of cyber crime and abuses during 2008 and 2009.

Incident wise Break-up

1. There are various reasons why it is extremely difficult for conventional law to cope with cyberspace. Some of these are discussed below:
2. Cyberspace is an intangible dimension that is impossible to govern and regulate using conventional law.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Cyberspace offers enormous potential for anonymity to its members. Readily available encryption software and stenographic tools that seamlessly hide information within image and sound files ensure the confidentiality of information exchanged between cyber-citizens.
7. 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.
8. Electronic information has become the main object of cyber crime. 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.
9. A software source code worth crores of rupees or a movie can be pirated across the globe within hours of their release.
10. Theft of corporeal information (e.g. books, papers, CD ROMS, floppy disks) is easily covered by traditional penal provisions.
11. 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.

Advantages Of Cyber Laws

The IT Act 2000 attempts to change outdated laws and provides ways to deal with cyber crimes. We need such laws so that people can perform purchase transactions over the Net through credit cards without fear of misuse. The Act offers the much-needed legal framework so that information is not denied legal effect, validity or enforce-ability, solely on the ground that it is in the from of electronic records. In view of the growth in transactions and communications carried out through electronic records, the Act seeks to empower government departments to accept filing, creating and retention of official documents in the digital format. The Act has also proposed a legal framework for the authentication and origin of electronic records / communications through digital signature.
From the perspective of e-commerce in India, the IT Act 2000 and its provisions contain many positive aspects. Firstly, the implications of these provisions for the e-businesses would be that email would now be a valid and legal from of communication in our country that can be duly produced and approved in a court of law.
Companies shall now be able to carry out electronic commerce using the legal infrastructure provided by The Act.

Digital signatures have been given legal validity and sanction in the Act.

The Act throws open the doors for the entry of corporate companies in the business of being Certifying Authorities for issuing Digital Signatures Certificates.

The Act Now allows Government to issue notification on the web thus heralding e-governance.

The Act enables the companies to file any from, application or any other document with any office, authority, body or agency owned or controlled by the appropriate Government in electronic from by means of such electronic from as may be prescribed by the appropriate Government.

The IT Act also addresses the important issues of security, which are so critical to the success of electronic transactions. The Act has given a legal definition to the concept of secure digital signatures that would be required to have been passed through a system of a security procedure, as stipulated by the Government at a later date.

Under the IT Act, 2000, it shall now be possible for corporate to have a statutory remedy in case if anyone breaks into their computer systems or network and causes damages or copies data. The remedy provided by the Act is in the from of monetary damages, not exceeding Rs. 1 crore.