CYCL1054 | Cyber Crimes And Cyber Laws

Though a Seminar Course, this course is on a crucial domain of law that is fastly expanding its horizon, dealing with machnaism adopted to check the abuse of cyber technology. The Ministry of IT and UGC has often insisted for teaching cyber law and cyber security courses in universities. Additionally the Cyber Law Centre at NLSIU has been contributing in its own way towards mainstreaming cyber law related courses other institutions.

The course will focus on understanding primarily legal aspects related by cyber laws and cybercrimes and whenever necessary on cyber forensic  aspects. Indian Information Technology Act along with certain criminal laws will be analysed in detail to understand the law framework in this regard. Additionally judicial decisions on issues related to cyber law and cyber space will be relied upon to understand the effectiveness fo law as well as the scope of the law.

The Pedagogy to be adopted for teachinig will be a combination of lecture, Socratic discussion and seminar style discussion methods,, depending upon the suitability of the method with respect to the concerned topic.

ABOUT THE COURSE:

‘Cybercrime’ once regarded as a myth is a reality today, encompassing new response with a new set of legal rules, principles and regulations.  India like many other legal systems has come up with special laws and machineries to deal with cyber wrongs, including both cyber torts and cyber-crimes. This special law has to deal with cyber-crimes along with already existing traditional legal principles and institutions in the country. Thus, the Indian Information Technology Act of 2000 vide 2008 Amendment along with provisions of IPC and few other special enactments attempts today at regulating cyber crimes. In addition, India has and is also coming up with various novel policies to deal with specific issues raised with the use and abuse of cyber technology, such as privacy, ISP liability, etc. In spite of this wide framework of law existing in the country today, most of them are either inadequate to confront cyber-crimes or fail in effective implementation due to lacunas that exist in the country’s institutional framework. In addition to these, lack of specialised and trained agencies to combat the menace, lack of understanding of legal and technical issues involved in cyber-crimes are some of the reasons affecting effective implementation of the laws in India.

This seminar course aims to understand and relook at the existing legal framework of the country on one hand and at the institutional framework on the other. Primarily a study of the relevant provisions of the parent legislation that is the Information Technology Act, 2000 vide 2008 Amendment will be covered along with other relevant provisions form other criminal laws of the country including IPC. In addition to the criminal law provisions, the civil liability imposing provisions of the IT Act will also be focused so as to understand the alternative structure, the enactment aims at conferring in addition to criminal law remedy.

Understanding the issues relating to CYBER FORENSICS will also be a part of the course content.

Though the focus of the course will be on Indian law relating to cyber-crimes, yet wherever essential a comparative analysis of other countries will be undertaken. The course also aims at studying the additional policies and regulations applicable in India and those which are pending draft / implementation. In addition to the above, the existing institutional framework involved in the task of combating cyber-crimes, will be analyzed.