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Nuclear weapons are fine as long as there is talk of deter rence. Right?
Technology has two sides-the brighter one that makes life a lot simpler and
the dark side that could lead to possible misuse. In almost every case, there
are users and abusers.
The CEO of Bazee.com found himself cornered by the law when it was found that
his website had sold the MMS clip. Bazee had just about 70,000 entries that day.
True, there are content filters. But as Rajendra Dave, country manager, Network
Security Solutions puts it," There is no foolproof security. It is easy for
a malafide person to slip past the security tools."
In the MMS case, the owner/CEO of the website was held responsible and
arrested.
What should the network service providers look out for when conducting
transactions on their sites? Section 67 of the IT Act 2000 that deals with
publishing of information, which is obscene in electronic form; Section 79 where
Network Service Providers are not liable in certain cases if he proves that the
offence was committed without his knowledge and Sec 85 where a person is held
responsible for the conduct of business of the company.
Self-regulation is the Key
According to legal experts, website owners can legally absolve themselves of
any responsibility as a contract is signed with every user that the site will
not be misused under Sec 79 of the IT Act.
However, providing blanket protection to the website owners is not considered
correct, says N Vijayashankar, founder of the NGO naavi.org and president, Cyber
Law College, Chennai. He believes this will encourage deliberate frauds and
erosion of faith in the E-market place that will be detrimental to the interests
of genuine players like Bazee.com.
Legal Safegaurds
Vijayashankar has proposed a 'Cyber Law Compliance' program for such network
service providers. This would mean that the CEO designates a Compliance Officer
who could then put in a system in place to prevent such cases from occurring
again.
In cases where, network service providers cannot exercise such options, they
could opt for an external consultancy to examine the system and business
processes to identify risk areas. The responsibilities of such officials could
be defined in the manual. This would ensure that the acceptability shifts from
the CEO to the compliance officer and brings in certain accountability into the
system, Vijayashankar says.
Re-Examine User Agreements
The user agreements also need to be re-looked. Presently, such network
service providers loosely implement these. For instance, the Bazee.com agreement
clearly states hints at the possibility mature audience material being displayed
on the site. Providers can take measures to ensure that the individuals wanting
to sign up get to read the fine print and do not hit the 'I Accept' button
before proper verification.
Providers should ensure that minors are not permitted access to the site. For
instance Yahoo.com does not enable minors to enter every part of the site.
Yahoo.com requires parent consent for the sign-up process for a minor. Such
providers also demand the credit cards numbers to ensure that minors do not gain
access to the site.
Vijayashankar has urged the industry captains including organizations such as
Nasscom, FICCI and CII to explore the possibilities of defining "Due
Diligence" at this point of time through a "Cyber Law Compliance
Guideline".
What is the strong point of the current law that requires "Due
Diligence" is that the control on what is expected of the industry is in
its own hands in the form of "Norms" that are developed for managing
the business of e-commerce sites such as auction sites.
Nanda Kasabe in Pune CyberMedia News
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