By- Karnika Seth, Cyberlaw expert Hate speech is a term for speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against a person or group of people based on their race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity,disability, language ability, moral or political views, socioeconomic, class, occupation or appearance (such as […]

By Karnika Seth, Cyberlaw expert & Partner, Seth Associates Advocates & legal Consultants Can we regulate the internet? The unprecedented advent of Internet is challenging many existing models of Information society and forms of regulation. Internet is a global communication network and in its quintessence, beyond the national frontiers and does not fit into the […]

By Karnika Seth, Chairperson, Lex Cyberia The term spam was first used in the early 1990s to describe e-mail messages, not related to the topic of discussion and postings that swamped newsgroups. Spam is frequently described as e-mail that is sent in bulk; flooding the Internet with copies of the same message and forcing these […]

Spoofing is a practice whereby the user on the internet attempts to conceal its IP address to conceal its true identity. Many crackers steal databases of credit cards or other sensitive information[1]. The concept of IP spoofing, was initially discussed in academic circles in the 1980’s. While known about for sometime, it was primarily theoretical […]

“Perhaps, the greatest impact that IT has had is on blurring the time and geographical divide. Through one computer station installed in a part of the world we are able to connect and transact business across borders and physical territories. Huge amounts of data can be stored and processed and retrieved through use of computers. […]

“The quandary over application of traditional rules to online transactions has brought a common consensus on atleast few basic principles that are accepted worldwide to regulate the cyberspace. Firstly, equivalence of traditional and electronic transactions. Much of the legislative reform across nations is based on the UNCITRAL Model Law of Electronic Commerce 1996. Secondly, establishing […]

“In the last decade, India witnessed an unprecedented index of cyber crimes, inter alia, trojan attacks, salami attacks, e-mail bombing, DOS attacks, information theft, or the most common offence of hacking. Despite technological measures being adopted by corporate organisations and individuals, the frequency of cyber crimes has increased over the last decade. Reliable sources report […]

“India’s IT Act is comprehensive legislation, but contains many lacunae. The passage of the IT Amendment Act 2008 will resolve many practical difficulties faced in the implementation of the Act. The IT Amendment Bill 2008 aims to bring significant changes in extant cyber laws in India,inter alia, introducing legal recognition to electronic signatures, data protection […]

“With the enforcement of the Information Technology Amendment Act 2008, India would become technologically neutral due to adoption of electronic signatures as a legally valid mode of executing signatures. This includes digital signatures as one of the modes of signatures and is far broader in ambit covering biometrics and other new forms of creating electronic […]

With the advent of internet pornography, particularly child pornography is become a major problem faced by nations. Many countries have attempted legislative measures to control this problem for example Section 67 of the IT Act makes publishing of any obscene information online as a punishable offence. There is Section 67B in the ITAct,2000 to combat […]