CHANDIGARH, Jan 20 — The Chief Justice of India, Dr A.S. Anand, said here today that activities in cyberspace had influenced almost all branches of laws, like commercial law, banking law, intellectual property law and law of evidence. While the legal systems of different countries are grappling with the issue of developing cyber law to meet novel challenges posed by the Internet, time alone would tell whether progress made in the cyber law would be adequate to meet evolving business needs of the global community. 

Dr Anand was delivering the inaugural address at a seminar on “E-Commerce, Information Technology and Cyber Laws : Emerging Trends in the New Millennium” here today. The seminar was organised to mark the opening of the Punjab and Haryana Regional Sub-Chapter of SAARCLAW India Chapter.

Dr Anand said electronic commerce had opened a new way of doing business. A variety of new challenges were coming up for those who used the Internet for business purposes. Under the circumstances a new stream of law — cyber law — had emerged. Simply put, cyber law was a term which referred to legal and regulatory aspects of the Internet and the World Wide Web(WWW).

Highlighting the need to impart special training to the investigating agencies, Dr Anand said investigation of crimes relating to computer network called for knowledge beyond the expertise and skills of most of the investigating officers. With at least some degree of proficiency presupposed, masterminds committed these crimes and it would be difficult to master the minds of these masterminds.

He said international cooperation would never come under so severe a test as it would to investigate computer-related crimes, because of their overwhelming transnational nature. The modern technical advancements had exposed all nations to the threat of new form of crimes. The legal profession would have to equip itself to meet various challenges arising out of these threats.

Dr Anand said in a country where registered post was still preferred to E-mail, it was not surprising that there was dearth of Indian jurisprudence on laws relating to the Internet. The laws currently governing commercial transactions were largely developed at a time when telegraphs and typewriters were the commonly used office technologies and business was conducted with paper documents and by mail. He regretted that while technologies and business practices had dramatically changed, law had been slower to keep pace.

He said the Cyber Law Bill introduced in Parliament sought to give legal recognition to electronic records by granting legal validity to information stored in the form of an electronic form. Under the proposed law, notwithstanding the Indian Evidence Act, any relevant computer output would be admissible as evidence.

The Haryana Governor, Babu Parmanand, urged the SAARC countries to discuss the implications of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in depth because there were widespread apprehensions among these countries about the organisation. He said the need of the hour was to clarify its role and objectives lucidly.

Babu Parmanand said the enforcement of the Technology Act, 2000, would require higher kind of legal and technical knowledge necessitating the changes in the legal systems of the SAARC countries and approach of legal communities.

The President of SAARCLAW India Chapter, Mr Justice Umesh C. Banerjee of the Supreme Court, said the IT revolution had ushered in a new field of jurisprudence and the best way to keep pace with the change was to interact with each other.

A Judge of the Nepal Supreme Court, Mr Justice Laxman Prasad Aryal, said the rule of law was an eternal principle governing our society. He said we should be guided by our own culture if we wanted the supremacy of law.

The Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Mr Justice A.B. Saharya, said SAARCLAW was a platform for interaction among legal fraternities of the South Asian Region to discuss the common challenges facing society. He said though various laws had been amended to incorporate the transfer of electronic data, much more needed to be done to incorporate the changes brought about by the Internet and other related fields.

The Secretary-General of SAARCLAW, Mr Bharat Upreti, cautioned against the possible misuse of the Internet as it could have a drastic effect on society.

Mr Mehmood Mandviwala, a senior barrister of Karachi in Pakistan, said IT had made the territorial boundaries redundant. But IT should not prevent us from meeting and in future such conferences should not be held online.

In a joint paper Dr Veer Singh, Professor in the Department of Laws, Panjab University, Chandigarh, and Dr Bharat Bhushan Parsoon, Member-Secretary, Chandigarh State Legal Services Authority, said a comprehensive international convention with due focus on cyber crimes should be formulated urgently and an International Criminal Tribunal with global jurisdiction to investigate, try and punish cyber offenders might be set up.

They said what was immediately needed was a detailed body of legal norms and standards followed by institutional arrangements for compulsory jurisdiction of judicial fora to adjudicate such violations. SAARC countries with limited resources and less advanced technology were more amenable to cyber crimes, particularly cyber terrorism. Therefore, they should pool their resources and seek transfer of advanced cyber technology from the developed world through regional cooperation to protect their people and their trade.

The Director of the Haryana IT Department, Mr K.K. Khandelwal, IAS: Mr K.P. Singh, DIG, CID, Haryana; and the Technical Director, NIC, Haryana, Mr Ghanshyam Bansal, said in their papers that e-commerce, the biggest future of the Internet, could only be possible if necessary legal infrastructure complimented the same to enable its vibrant growth. They said it would 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.

Mr Amir-Ul Islam, a senior advocate of Bangladesh, said any premature regulation mandating the law or forum of any one country for consumer transactions could inhibit growth of e-commerce. The governments should rely on voluntary business and self-regulatory practices and market pressures to develop more flexible and balanced solutions.

A Senior Advocate, Dr A.M. Singhvi, said India was the pioneer in enacting IT law.

The President of the Organising Committee, Mr Harbhagwan Singh, stressed the need for cooperation among the SAARC countries to face the new challenges thrown up by IT.