Cyber Crime – The Challenge for Government - Piyush Gupta, Consultant (IT) MGSIPAP
The trend of common citizen using Internet will keep growing and soon everyone will be “Netizens” by choice or by force. Sooner or later, every one of us will will not only be using the Internet but also be developing a pressing need for for it. Internet has already become an integral part of our life and will continue to influence every aspect of our dayday to-day activity. If you were driving a car on a road, you would perhaps like to know the laws of the place governing the road use. Similarly, if you drive on the “Information “Information Super Highway” (which many think Internet is), you need to know what are the laws applicable therein. Cyber crime is the most dangerous of all crimes because of the magnitude of the loss it is causing today, the ease with which it is committed; its visibility and the disregard of geographical boundaries; the difficulty in investigation, collection of evidence and the successful prosecution of the cyber criminal. Once the Internet becomes an integral part of the daily life of even the common man, which is not far away, cyber crime if not checked in time would be destructive for civilization itself. itself. In fact, the growth of Internet should be directly proportional with the growth of protective technology and other means to check cyber crimes. The awareness of Internet crime is fast growing among law enforcing agencies in the country. As cyber crime opens up unheard of threats to global security, governments all over the world are gearing up to fight it and cyber cop is not something unique to India. Until recently, there were no Cyber Laws in India. India. Using Internet was therefore without any specific legal accountability. Since one of the most significant uses of the Internet Internet is to conduct Commercial transactions, it has become imperative for the country to adopt a regime of Cyber Laws which would determine the rights and liabilities of parties using the Internet for business or otherwise. Before the Information Technology Act, was passed in the year 2000, hacking was not even a crime. In fact, only 12 countries had laws against hacking. This allows hackers to operate freely from a country, which has no legislation on cyber crime. The
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best thing to do therefore is to take precautions at your end. Computer crime, which includes piracy, data theft and time theft, besides bank frauds and many other issues. In India, we are just waking up to its dangers. In India the information technology act, 2000, has given the law enforcing agencies the legal framework to control, prevent, detect and punish cyber criminals and after its notification on August 15, 2000. From cyber security assurance group in Washington to new FBI offices covering computer crime, federal law enforcers all over the United States are gearing up for what they fear will be a widespread outbreak of criminal activity on the internet. Cross-border investigation and cooperation in this regard between nations would go a long way in controlling and punishing cyber crime. The Internet being a global network, cross-border e-commerce disputes raise questions of jurisdiction. Many web sites do not even carry their geographical addresses, and one does not know with whom one is chatting online. The Internet is said to have led to the disappearance of physical boundaries. Another area of concern in this area is the Domain name disputes. A cause of frequent domain name disputes is the first-come-first-serve principle adopted for registration of domain names. At the time when a domain name is registered, no inquiry is made as to whether it is in conflict rights under Intellectual Property law. There has been some controversy on the issue of whether the downloading of a web page on the computer of the user while on Internet, amounts to violation of copyright or not.
While accessing a page on Internet the user actually downloads a copy of the web
page on his/her own computer, it amounts to reproduction of the page. However, another view is that since the user is downloading only for viewing while connected to Internet, it does not amount to copyright infringement. Moreover, whenever a web page is posted on the Internet, it is done with the intention that the material is read and viewed. At the same time the liability of Internet Service Providers for copyright violation committed on the Internet has been a subject of debate and controversy. ISPs claim that they are only passive carriers similar to telecom companies and therefore should not be held responsible for misuse of any web site information by their subscriber.
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The next area of concern under this subject is the computer software piracy. Computer software piracy is a global problem and not merely a problem of the developing countries.
According to the information released by the Business Software Alliance, the
worldwide loss due to software piracy was about US $11.4 billion in 1997, up from 11.2 billion in 1996. It is wrongly thought that software piracy/thefts hurt only those who create the software, but the damage goes further, impacting jobs, wages, taxes and retail sales. The Internet has challenged many of the fundamental longstanding concepts of direct and indirect taxes. Governments all over the world are struggling with the various issues raised by e-commerce. The issues raised by the e-commerce taxation are complex and controversial in nature because it has created serious conflict between the developed and developing nations. Political considerations and vested interests have further added complexities to the e-commerce taxation issues. There are also many more problems and issues being raised with the increase use of Internet. The very nature of Internet has today caused certain typical and characteristic problems of evidence.
The Internet permits and promotes global communication
irrespective of distances and geographical locations. The Internet also permits anonymity. In addition, with the Information Technology Act enforced in India for the first time, has also protected a computer system from un-authorized access, infecting a computer with virus, copy of un-authorized data, and many more problems, which remained un-tackled from law till now. Planting computer virus, un-authorized access to network or computer and many more such problems are posing a challenge for the organization heads and criminal justice system. Today, the anxiety created by this exponentially growing communication channel is raising many doubts and questions in the mind of Netizens, which can be solved by creating awareness amongst the government officials and the citizens. The need to the hour for all government departments and institutions is to implement Internet and email usage policy for its employees in order to safe guard itself from the cyber world threats.
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