Understanding the Law of the Cyber Space

Abstract

Cyber Space - a term coined by Novelist William Gibson - denotes a place without physical walls or even physical dimensions has connected the globe in the shortest span of time to the extent no technology has done before in human history. It will be news to many that Internet - the nervous system of the body called cyber space is almost three decades old. Its origins in 1968 and 1969 with the initiative of the British Physical Laboratories and with the United States military project called the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The basic idea of the project was to connect the defence network computers to safeguard it from attacks on the physical telephone network. The leading Universities which assisted the network later formed a sister network on the same lines, which was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, called as the NSFnet. The students involved in such development had a closed user group, as the navigation of such network is a complicated one and needed special skills. It was only in 1993, it became a tool of the masses with the invention of a browser called "Mosaic". This browser is a simple tool, which allowed even those who did not have computer knowledge to share information. Today the Internet connects almost 200 million people- people from 195 countries-approximately 3% of the world population and back home the connectivity is estimated to grow around 125% annually over the next three years.

The moot point is what does it mean to people? Can Internet provide water or food or will it eradicate AIDS? Will it stop crime or wars? Do we need legislations to promote the phenomenon or we need legislations to control and regulate it? Or simply it should be let off without any legislations? The answers are much complex than the cyber revolution itself. For optimists the cyber revolution holds a new path of prosperity, connectivity, exchange of information, trade and business and for those who are skeptical it will create digital divide with the division of knows and know-nots slicing through the haves and have-nots. If these are extreme viewpoints there is a huge shade of gray area in which cyber space operates and in such polarization of views emerges the cyber jurisprudence, which is chasing the speeding technology on the information highway to formulate the traffic regulations.

As the traffic systems are varied and chaotic depending on the country you drive, the same is true for the cyber laws of the respective environment you operate in. The following chapter will deal with the questions of how to define cyber space? What relevance or impact it has on the subject of 'Law'? Do we need to formulate and study a new segment called 'cyber laws'? If so what will be the basic ingredients of such study?