TECHNOLOGY IS CHASING YOU AND SO IS LAW

Information Technology, Communication & Entertainment Law Practice

It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times.

– Oliver Wendell Holmes

True, technology has not only increased the enjoyment quotient of life, but it has also made us all a little less private. You have adopted the technology but given away your privacy. There is always a ‘surprise’ chasing you in the form of either SMS or a call. You are no longer alone in the world wide digital world (www has given way to wwdw). In fact you are in a digital loop.

Ability to track users is fast becoming the No.1 privacy concern. A technology patented by Snap Track Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Inc. uses the global positioning system of 24 satellites that orbit the Earth and a chip built into a mobile phone receives signals beamed down from atleast one of the satellites, allowing the handset, in conjunction with a carrier’s computer system, to analyse the caller’s position.

Once such satellite guided systems are up and running, location companies and carriers will be able to build an enormous profile of a user’s physical and digital movements. Bad news is that such satellite guided systems are up and running! No carrier company would ever tell you this but the fact remains that you are being monitored day in and day out! Someone is creating your digital profile, 24x7x365.

Every number you ring, every word you talk, every message you send – it is being archived somewhere. And chances are that even a MMS that you and your partner have created for your own private pleasure may end up on an auction site and get traded. This is the power of networking in a ‘wired’ and ‘wireless’ world. Even your private life is not private!

Yes…law is behind the times! Technology has created new frontiers for the jurisprudence. World over, the sovereign governments have responded back by enacting various enactments, not to regulate technology but to regulate human behaviour in the emerging setting.

You are being monitored day in and day out! Someone is creating your digital profile, 24 × 7 × 365

The success has been mixed. For example, various governments in the Middle East have been doing their level best to stop access to ‘pornography’ via the Net, for last many years, but to no avail. Filters blocking the pornographic sites met with limited success only. Similarly, the Saudi Arabia government introduced a ban on the use of ‘camera’ mobile phones in the public places but within a month it had to revoke the ban.

The fact is technology has given a new impetus to freedom of expression. The question is, how far can you stretch your freedom (to express). The problem is that Internet does not recognize any man-made boundaries, whether based on politics or economics. Internet as it is growing is nothing but a melting pot of world cultures and it is bound to influence the human behaviour in every sense. Remember, “whatever you touch (electronically or otherwise), it touches you back”.

A paradigm shift has taken place in jurisprudence, i.e. tangible rights have given way to intangible rights. Thanks to technology, governance is changing into ‘e-governance’, commerce into ‘e-commerce’ and signatures into ‘digital signatures’. A new society has emerged from nowhere and is growing exponentially. This society is in an urgent need of a new set of laws of governance to keep pace.

It is thus imperative that the law must understand the ‘language of technology’ and technology users must understand the ‘language of law’. To say that technology and law are like east and west and “twain shall never meet” would be fallacious. Technological development is a continuous process. It is improving all the time. Law has to move in-tandem with the technological advances.

With the enactment of the Information Technology Act, 2000, in India, law has taken a quantum jump to include even the intangibles within its purview.

The Act is a proactive piece of legislation. It is to be read and understood from the point of view of one, facilitating e-commerce and two, as an alternative to paper-based methods of communication and storage of information.

Internet as it is growing is nothing but a melting pot of world cultures and it is bound to influence the human behaviour in every sense. Remember, “whatever you touch (electronically or otherwise), it touches you back”.

Effectiveness of legislation also depends upon the extent of preparedness. Keeping this fact in mind, instruments, like promissory note, bill of exchange, power-of-attorney, trust deed, contract for the sale or conveyance of immovable property have been excluded from the Act. That does not mean that they shall remain excluded. For example, in the beginning the ‘cheques’ as negotiable instruments were excluded, but a recent amendment [The Negotiable Instruments (Amendment and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2002] has not only made creation and acceptability of “a cheque in the electronic form” (e-cheque) legally valid but has also initiated payment or receipt on the basis of an electronic image of a truncated cheque.

The body of law grows from judicial pronouncements and awareness. People are now becoming aware of the fact that there exists a Cyber Law legislation in India – The Information Technology Act, 2000, and recently an ‘Expert Committee on Information Technology Act’ has been set up to examine and recommend suitable amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Setting up of an ‘Expert Committee’ itself suggests that the Government of India wants the law to move
in-tandem with the technological advances. It is a welcome step and would go a long way in further harmonizing the
Indian IT Act with other legislations, the world
over.