Govt Drops Prying Clauses From It Bill

The government yesterday dropped the clauses seeking mandatory registration of websites hosted in a server in India and compulsory monitoring of cybercafe customer details from the Information Technology Bill 99.

The recommendations were made by the standing committee on science and technology, environment and forests, comprising 44 Parliament members. The report was submitted to both the Houses on May 12, 2000.

The infotech industry was most critical of the clause which said, "Any person hosting a website or a portal on a server located in India shall furnish to the Controller, the details of the website, portal, persons posting such website and portal and such other details as may be prescribed by the Central Government."

 

The committee also suggested a Rs 1 crore fine, instead of Rs 10 lakh, for people who create and inject computer viruses.

The amendments defined a hacker as "whoever with the intent to cause or knowing that he is likely to cause wrongful loss or damage to the public or any person destroys or deletes or alters any information residing in a computer resources or diminishes its value or utility or affects it injuriously by any means commits hacking."

The Bill, comprising 93 sections divided into 13 chapters, was drafted with a view to providing a peripheral framework for e-commerce.

The chapters focus on preliminary matters; digital signature; electronic governance; attribution, acknowledging and dispatching e-records; securing electronic records and digital signatures; regulating the certifying authorities and digital signature certificates; obligations of subscribers; penalties and adjudication; the cyber regulations appellate tribunal, offenses, network service providers not to be liable in certain cases and miscellaneous provisions It also includes four schedules to lay down the relative amendments to be made to the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act 1872, the Banker Evidence Act 1891, and the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934.