India entered the Cyber Law
regime when the ITA-2000 was passed with effect from October 17, 2000. At that
time India was supposed to be the 16th country in the world to have passed the
law of that nature. Since then many more countries have passed similar
legislation.
When ITA-2000 was under
consideration, the draft law was available to the public and several
suggestions were made to the Government to improve the drafting of the law.
Some of them were ultimately incorporated in the final Act but many were not.
As a result, the Act got passed with some glaring drafting errors and
avoidable complications. It is therefore not very surprising that even after
15 months after the Act came into existence, the first legally valid Digital
Signature in India is yet not available. The experience has underscored the
fact that for any law, more so a new law to be adopted quickly, there is a
need for it to be simple enough for the common men to comprehend and comply.
In this context, it is
interesting to observe the draft legislation on Electronic Communication
formulated by Pakistan. While it is evident that the UNCITRAL model law has
been the basis of this legislation, there are many places in the ordinance
where simplicity strikes the analyst.
For example the chapter on
offences has few clauses but they effectively cover hacking,Virus, Denial of
Service and Privacy invasion. Similarly the "Electronic Signature" and
"Security Procedure" part has also been expressed in very simple terms.
While there are some areas
such as Cyber Frauds where the ordinance seems to fall short, overall it
appears to be a good piece of legislation which the common man can understand
easily.
A more
detailed analysis of
the ordinance is available here for academic discussion. I suppose that the
students of Cyber Law College.com may find this useful.
Naavi
January 17, 2002.