Cyber Law is a term used to describe the legal issues related to use of communications technology, particularly "cyberspace", i.e. the Internet. It is less a distinct field of law in the way that property or contract are, as it is an intersection of many legal fields, including intellectual property, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction. In essence, cyber law is an attempt to apply laws designed for the physical world to human activity on the Internet.

India became independent on 15th August, 1947. In the 49th year of Indian independence, Internet was commercially introduced in our country. The beginnings of Internet were extremely small and the growth of subscribers painfully slow. However as Internet has grown in our country, the need has been felt to enact the relevant Cyberlaws which are necessary to regulate Internet in India. This need for cyberlaws was propelled by numerous factors.

Secondly, the existing laws of India, even with the most benevolent and liberal interpretation, could not be interpreted in the light of the emerging cyberspace, to include all aspects relating to different activities in cyberspace. In fact, the practical experience and the wisdom of judgment found that it shall not be without major perils and pitfalls, if the existing laws were to be interpreted in the scenario of emerging cyberspace, without enacting new cyberlaws. As such, the need for enactment of relevant cyberlaws.

Thirdly, none of the existing laws gave any legal validity or sanction to the activities in Cyberspace. For example, the communications via instant messengers, blogs and message boards etc require legal sanctity. Courts and judiciary in our country have been reluctant to grant judicial recognition to the legality of such communication in the absence of any specific law having been enacted by the Parliament. As such the need has arisen for Cyberlaw.

Fourthly, Internet requires an enabling and supportive legal infrastructure in tune with the times. This legal infrastructure can only be given by the enactment of the relevant Cyberlaws as the traditional laws have failed to grant the same. E-commerce, the biggest future of Internet, can only be possible if necessary legal infrastructure compliments the same to enable its vibrant growth.

All these and other varied considerations created the conducive atmosphere for the need for enacting relevant cyberlaws in India. The Government of India responded by coming up with the draft of the first Cyberlaw of India - The Information Technology Bill, 1999. Keeping in line with other countries, India also has passed its first cyber law, The Information Technology Act 2000, which aims to provide the legal backbone for enabling e-commerce in the Country.

Issues of jurisdiction and sovereignty have quickly come to the fore in the era of the Internet. The Internet does not tend to make geographical and jurisdictional boundaries clear, but Internet users remain in physical jurisdictions and are subject to laws independent of their presence on the Internet.

As such, a single transaction may involve the laws of at least three jurisdictions:

Jurisdiction is an aspect of state sovereignty and it refers to judicial, legislative and administrative competence. Although jurisdiction is an aspect of sovereignty, it is not coextensive with it. The laws of a nation may have extra-territorial impact extending the jurisdiction beyond the sovereign and territorial limits of that nation. This is particularly problematic as the medium of the Internet does not explicitly recognize sovereignty and territorial limitations. There is no uniform, international jurisdictional law of universal application, and such questions are generally a matter of conflict of laws, particularly private international law. An example would be where the contents of a web site are legal in one country and illegal in another. In the absence of a uniform jurisdictional code, legal practitioners are generally left with a conflict of law issue.

Another major problem of cyber law lies in whether to treat the Internet as if it were physical space (and thus subject to a given jurisdiction's laws) or to act as if the Internet is a world unto itself (and therefore free of such restraints). Those who favor the latter view often feel that government should leave the Internet community to self-regulate.

Architecture: Everything from internet filtering software (which searches for keywords or specific URLs and blocks them before they can even appear on the computer requesting them), to encryption programs, to the very basic architecture of TCP/IP protocol, falls within this category of regulation. It is arguable that all other modes of regulation either rely on, or are significantly supported by Cyber Law.

Norms: As in all other modes of social interaction, conduct is regulated by social norms and conventions in significant ways. While certain activities or kinds of conduct online may not be specifically prohibited by the code architecture of the internet, or expressly prohibited by applicable law, nevertheless these activities or conduct will be invisibly regulated by the inherent standards of the community, in this case the internet “users.” And just as certain patterns of conduct will cause an individual to be ostracized from our real world society, so too certain actions will be censored or self-regulated by the norms of whatever community one chooses to associate with on the internet.

Markets: Closely allied with regulation by virtue of social norms, markets also regulate certain patterns of conduct on the internet. While economic markets will have limited influence over non-commercial portions of the internet, the internet also creates a virtual marketplace for information, and such information affects everything from the comparative valuation of services to the traditional valuation of stocks. In addition, the increase in popularity of the internet as a means for transacting all forms of commercial activity, and as a forum for advertisement, has brought the laws of supply and demand in cyberspace.

Internet regulation in other countries

While there is some United States law that does restrict access to materials on the internet, it does not truly filter the internet. Many Asian and Middle Eastern nations use any number of combinations of code-based regulation to block material that their governments have deemed inappropriate for their citizens to view. China and Saudi Arabia are two excellent examples of nations that have achieved high degrees of success in regulating their citizen’s access to the internet.

Pros and Cons of Cyber Laws

In view of the growth in transactions and communications carried out through electronic records, the Act seeks to empower government departments to accept filing, creating and retention of official documents in the digital format. The Act has also proposed a legal framework for the authentication and origin of electronic records / communications through digital signature.

Conclusions

Cyber law is a generic term, which denotes all aspects, issues and the legal consequences on the Internet, the World Wide Web and cyber space. India is the 12th nation in the world that has cyber legislation apart from countries like the US, Singapore, France, Malaysia and Japan.

The computer-related crime is a real, (at least in respect of certain offences) expanding phenomenon. Furthermore, a steady increase in number of such crimes in this area is expected which demands for greater attention of lawmakers. The law of the Internet has already emerged, and we believe can continue to emerge with individual users voting to join the particular systems they find most congenial.

But can the cyber laws of the country be regarded as sufficient and secure enough to provide a strong platform to the country’s e-commerce industry for which they were meant. If India doesn’t want to loose its position and wishes to stay as the world’s leader forever in outsourcing market, it needs to take fast but intelligent steps to cover the glaring loopholes of the Act.