Need for separate laws?

Even as the Union Cabinet has approved the amendments proposed in the Information Technology Act 2000 (IT Act 2000), industry experts opine there's a need for separate acts for e-commerce, data theft and nextGen technologies.

The Act has become relevant for the IT/ ITeS industry as the amendments look at strengthening data security aspects and the legislative framework for the Indian IT BPO sector.

However, before it gets introduced in the Winter session of the Parliament as a Bill, "there's a need to introduce three separate laws for IT "�an IT Act for e-commerce, a separate Act for NextGen technologies like phishing, credit card, mobile cloning, identity theft and others and also a separate act for data theft as this can be both online as well as physically stolen," says Vijay Mukhi, president, Foundation for Information Security and Technology (FIST).

Concurs Subho Ray, president, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI): "The IT act was enacted to enable digital signatures and not e-commerce, which has taken off on its own."

He further emphasises the amendments to The IT Act 2000 have taken care of most of the pressing demands of the industry; introduced third part liability wherein Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies or a third party company would be responsible for information handled by them; also made a distinction between child pornography and pornography besides moving away from digital signatures to electronic signatures.

Crediting the Government for addressing the issues facing the IT industry, Rohas Nagpal, president, Asian School of Cyber laws says, "What is now required is to set-up an ecosystem of judges, public prosecutors, police, corporates and individuals that is trained in the cyberlaws and are aware of the liabilities that govern them."

Response from Internet players was muted. Internet companies Ebay, which was in the past implicated for one of its users posting porn on its site, refused to comment on the amendments.

"All our spokes-people are travelling at this time," said an Ebay official. Similarly, Google whose affiliate company, Orkut is implicated in a legal imbroglio for hosting an hate group against the country on its site refused to comment. A company spokesperson said, "As a company policy we do not comment on policy and government issues."