The Reasons Why We Need Cyber Law

There are many reasons why it is extremely difficult for the existing conventional law to manage the challenges existing along with cyberspace. Some of the reasons have been discussed as follows:

• Cyberspace is an incorporeal dimension which cannot be governed and regulate using conventional law.
• Cyberspace has zero importance for any sort of jurisdictional boundaries. A person in India could break into a bank’s electronic vault hosted on a computer in USA and transfer millions of Rupees to another bank in Switzerland, all within minutes. All a person would need is a laptop computer and a cell phone.
• Cyberspace handles giant traffic volumes every second. Billions of emails are spanned around the globe.
• Cyberspace is absolutely open for participation of people. It doesn’t identify who is having genuine identity and has the false one. Easy accessibility makes it even easier for the purpose of communication. A ten-year-old in Bhutan can have a live chat session with eight year-old in Bali without any regard for the distance or the anonymity between them. This tells us about the geographical reach of the cyber space.
• Cyberspace offers extensive potential for anonymity to its members. Readily available encryption software and Steganography tools that seamlessly hide information within image and sound files ensure the confidentiality of information exchanged between cyber-citizens.
• Cyberspace offers never-seen-before economic tenacity. Software whose value is of billions of rupees can be traded over the Internet without the need for any government licenses, shipping and handling charges and without paying any customs duty. This results in huge amount of economical loss for the creator of the software as well as the government which charges taxes.
• Electronic information has become the main constituent of cyber crime. It is marked by extreme mobility, which exceeds by far the adjustability of persons, goods or other services. International computer networks located in different geographical places can transfer huge amounts of data around the globe in a matter of seconds.
• A software source code worth crores of rupees or a movie can be pirated across the globe [1]within hours of their release. It has become very common these days where we get to see a movie being leaked on illegal websites for free download. This harms the originality of any content which is available online.

Theft of corporeal information (e.g. books, papers, CD ROMs, floppy disks) is easily covered by traditional penal provisions. However, the problem begins when electronic records are copied quickly, inconspicuously and often via telecommunication facilities.