Cyber waves

Ever since it first flashed in the headlines a few weeks ago in the Capital, the MMS scandal has been a reminder and a taunt. There is a growing lag between new technologies and our ability to cope with them. The sexually explicit pictures of a school-going boy and girl that circulated through the Multi-media Messaging Service on cellphones, which then found their way to the online marketplace, have raised questions about privacy in times when unobtrusive cameras surreptitiously take pornographic pictures and circulate them without the consent of the subject. Since most recipients of these images were less than 18, what can be done by teachers, by parents, to draw the line? These are large questions. But the high-profile arrests carried out by Delhi Police, first of the CEO of Baazee.com, and then of the boy who recorded the offending images in the first place, raise a sharper question: is the police missing the point, entirely?

Only four years ago in 2000, India became one of the few countries to come out with an Information Technology Act to regulate and to legalise e-commerce and take cognisance of offences in the arena. But there is obviously a long way to go before the Indian legal system catches up with the world of the internet. It is being asked, and legitimately, why the CEO of a portal should be held personally responsible for every violation of the Act or the content provider be held solely responsible for everything that is put on the website. The action against Avnish Bajaj seems even more bizarre given that the portal only provides the interface for the buyer and seller. It can be nobody8217;s point, surely, that each and every transaction must be checked among millions of bids on the internet. The entire episode will have done some good, however, if some long overdue attention can now be paid to these and other grey areas that specialists have pointed to in the ITA 2000, to little avail. There are issues pertaining to jurisdiction, checks and balances, intellectual property rights, and the extent of liability that wait to be addressed far more rigorously and relevantly.

The arrest of the teenager at the centre of the storm raises another set of questions about a system that hastens to punish rather than to educate. Punishment is a more convenient response. And, of course, it is far less hard work. In times when parents need to hire detectives to keep tabs on their children, the MMS scandal is more evidence of the yawning communication gap that may be opening up between parents and children, teachers and children. Young people are being introduced to new technologies and freedoms daily, with little or no effort to acquaint them with the norms that must mediate and regulate their use. Delhi Police8217;s heavy-handed action is no solution. It seems more a part of the effort to avoid confronting the problem.