Cyber Law

Author: Tarsem

Cyber law encompasses a wide variety of legal issues related to use of communications technology. It includes use of Internet as well as any other form of Computer or Digital Processing Devices. It includes intellectual property, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction.





As the law of Cyber Space, as envisioned by William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer , Cyber Law addresses the issues of Virtual Property and Virtual Persons. It covers rights of Netizens who are the citizens of Cyber Space and regulation of the Cyber Space for a peaceful and harmonious existence of Netizens.





The biggest challenge before Cyber Law is its integration with the legacy system of laws applicable to the physical world.





Since Cyber Space has no geographical boundaries, nor the Netizens have physical characteristics of Sex, Age etc, several conflicts surface when the rights of Netizens are viewed in the eyes of Citizens of a physical space. This is well reflected in the conflict between the Trade mark Laws and system of Domain Names.





There are several countries which have enacted special laws for regulating Cyber Space Transactions of Citizens within their Physical Jurisdiction and these are recognized as the Cyber Laws of the Physical Jurisdiction.





A recent book by Ahmad Kamal entitled "The Law of Cyber-Space" published by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, argues in favor of starting global negotiations on comprehensive and harmonized laws in this domain. The ultimate solution is to “harmonise” the laws of all the countries by making a compatible and commonly acceptable international treaty safeguarding the cyberspace.





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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Cyber Law

Cyber Crime-the New Threat to the Advanced World

Author: Seema Sharma

Cyber world today is facing the most complicated problem of fighting a crime which is hard to detect and curb in the borderless world. Cyber crime though has its origin in the conventional crime, it is hard to detect because of the highly technical mode of committing it. It is ironical that the advancement in the computer network worldwide, which has brought all the nations together on a global stage, has given rise to such an alarming situation. The law enforcement agencies, unaware of the technological know-how find it hard to nab the criminals involved in the offences related to cyber space. The main categories of cyber crime include hacking, theft of information, data diddling, virus attacks, web jacking, Trojan attacks etc.





Cyber terrorism is another dimension of the cyber crime which has raised serious security concerns world over. It could be understood as planned and intentional hacking of computer programs, data and information. The US economy is extremely vulnerable to cyber crimes as all the functions being performed by the government and financial institutions in the US are highly dependant upon the world of computers.





Cyber terrorists are capable of causing devastation to an unimaginable extent. In the year 1988, a computer virus was created that infected more than six thousand internet servers. In some other part of the world, a group of cyber criminals, posing as phone technicians, rerouted calls by tapping the phone lines. In yet another incident, the services provided by an airport were greatly affected when a hacker halted the airports’ computer system in 1997. These incidents indicate that cyber terrorists have the potential of inflicting damage to the whole community.





There are many criminal groups within the territorial boundaries of United States, which are capable of carrying out destruction through cyber technologies within the country. They have sophisticated websites that provide links to other criminal groups.





Among the various terrorist organizations, Al Qaeda has notoriously held the top most position in the list of U.S. government since many years. Its network has penetrated its roots deep within the humanity across the world. Planned attacks by Al Qaeda prove the use of advanced and sophisticated technology by the organization. Hizbullah is another terrorist organization which functions in the U.S. They are determined to establish Islamic power in the Middle East countries and propagate beliefs and ideas through their website.





The mode of operation of cyber crimes is different from the conventional crimes. Just with a single cyber attack the professional cyber criminals can affect a huge number of network servers and computer systems and can conduct his activities by remaining far away from the place of incident.





Tracking cyber terrorists and prosecuting them is not an effortless procedure. The government of U.S.A has framed the National Strategy for the security of cyber world which includes clauses for the expansion of national cyberspace security response system and procedures for development of training programs.





Co-operation and collaboration from all segments of society – right from home level computer users to extremely crucial government bureaus, is required to combat cyber terrorism. At worldwide level, Interpol, which works as mediator between law agencies of different countries, has served a great role in publicizing the names of cyber terrorists and in tracking of criminals on international scale. Apart from providing intelligence services to the countries associated with it, Interpol is attempting to facilitate data sharing between member nations, conducting operational information analysis, sponsoring training in cyber terrorism.





The Federal Bureau of Investigation has set up the National Infrastructure Protection Center which is trying hard to enhance communication levels between different government agencies for curbing cyber terrorism. The principle behind the U.S.A Patriot Act is to detect and scrutinize cyber crimes. This act has given the authority to probe the activities regarding cyber terrorism to Secret Service.

About the Author:

Seema Sharma

Legal Research Executive

Mindsprings Solutiopns (India) Pvt. Ltd.

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Cyber Crimes, Space and so Forth -a Concept of Cyber Laws

Author: Siddharth Chitturi

Cyber law is a generic term, which refers to all the legal and regulatory aspects of Internet and the World Wide Web. This cyber law governs a boundless, timeless, space less, medium which has emerged to environ the future business, known as “cyber medium or cyber space”. The electronic medium that is being discussed here is the “internet”. The popularity of internet raised many critical questions about the regulations and the governance of various aspects. Internet grew in a completely unplanned and unregulated manner and continuing grow rapidly. With the population of Internet multiplying about every 100 days; the internet is becoming the new chosen atmosphere of the world. As the internet users are increasing day to day, the scope for committing crimes also increases. Therefore a need for a Law that would govern this medium was seen.

Under the laws for cyber space certain acts have been identified and classified as cyber crimes. A cyber crime is an offence whereby the mode of committing the offence is a computer system and the means is the internet. The psychological factors behind the person committing such cyber crimes can identified as greed, revenge, frustration, grievance and mismanagement. The acts classified as offences under the cyber law are; Hacking, Cyber stalking, Denial of service attack, Virus dissemination, Software piracy, Phishing, & Child Pornography etc. These crimes are real and are affecting everyone, individuals, business organizations, nation states & the international communities. These cyber crimes may be committed against Individuals, Organization, Company, Group of Individuals and Society at large. As the times pass by evolution of almost every thing tales place, so did an evolution take place in the cyber crimes. With the emergence of “Cyber Terrorism” this was evident.

Cyber Terrorism can be said to be the act of controlling a victim’s computers, allied information technology, particularly through the cyber space (Internet), to cause physical, real-world harm or severe disturbance. As the Internet continues to expand, and computer systems continue to be allocating more responsibility and while becoming more & more complex and interdependent, disruption or terrorism via cyberspace may become a more grave danger.

In the ordinary course of time, when an offence is committed by an individual, the subsequent action is either police report of the offence or investigation. On the successful completion of the investigation the offence is adjudicated by the judiciary, same is the case with Cyber Crimes. There are some techniques prescribed for investigation of such cyber crimes and there are also adjudicating authorities or courts established in order to hear and dispose these cases of cyber crimes.

Investigations into cyber crimes can be done through Computer Forensics and Time Stamping. Computer forensics is the process of Identifying, Procuring, Analyzing, & Presenting Digital Evidence in a manner that is legally acceptable in the court of law. Computer forensics is used to conduct investigations into computer related incidents whether the incident is an external intrusion into your systems, internal frauds or staff breaching your security policy. The most important factor in the investigation of cyber crimes is to prove the “Time” of the occurrence of the crimes, as time stands to be most important factor in computer forensics it is very important. Under the concept of time stamping crimes are synchronized as events of an accurate clock. In the case of cyber crimes it is almost impossible to commit a crime without leaving a time trail. The results of the time stamping are regarded as to be as undisputable evidence. Time stamping speeds up the investigation and dissuades the cyber criminals.

Adjudication of offences under any law is very important in order to penalize the offender. Adjudication is the legal process by which the Judge reviews the evidence and the arguments, including legal reasoning set forth by parties or litigants to come to a decision or judgment which determines rights and obligations between the parties involved, or in other common sense adjudication is the normal court procedure. The courts in United States of America have already begun taking cognizance of various kinds of fraud and crimes being committed in the internet. The victims of such Cyber crimes have found no healing remedy, they can either claim for civil damages or wait for the culprits to be caught and be tried under provisions, made for such offences committed in cyberspace.

In India, with the Information Technology Act, 2000 being in force the establishment an adjudicating authority is clearly visible under the Section 46, Chapter IX. This provision states that the Central Government may establish one or more cyber regulation appallet tribunals / cyber appallet tribunals, in order to adjudicate upon the matters of cyber crimes. It is further stated that all matters in such context may be referred to the High Court only through appeal. The statutes like Information Technology Act, 2000 and Indian Penal Code, 1860 lay certain provisions classify certain acts done through internet as offences under the law.

Globalization has caused a tremendous increase in the IT sector, resulting in the increase of cyber crimes in each and every corner of the world including the developing countries like India, Japan etc. These nations have opted for their own measures against such internet related offences. It is a very evident fact about the growth and evolution of laws through out the world, as the world grew larger so did the necessity of governing rules and regulations in the form of law were seen at a high priority. Today, same shall be the case with growing cyberspace and its allied difficulties.

About the Author:

Iam 22years old, resident of Hyderabad,India.pursuing Honors in BBM.LLB from The ICFAI Law School at Dehradun, India. My hobbies are reading and surfing the internet. I have great interest in Information technology and mobile technology and at leisure I write articles on law topics, some of them have been published online. I have participated in essay competitions and have won them at 1st and 2nd positions.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Cyber Crimes, Space and so Forth -a Concept of Cyber Laws