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Journalism of Courage
In the early Nineties, when the Internet was still regarded as newfangled in the US, a suit involving intellectual property rights was filed in an East Coast court. Forgotten today, it was regarded as the Roe vs Wade of the Internet at that time. After the counsel for the prosecution had gone through an exposition that lasted hours, explaining the merits of his client8217;s case, he felt it was necessary to stop for questions, for the technical nuances of digital communications can be difficult to grasp. The judge himself had a whopper of a query. quot;What,quot; he asked, quot;is the Internet?quot;
Next year, the Indian legal establishment could find itself echoing him. The government is showing serious intent to push through an Information Technology Act that could give Indian businesses access to a 200 billion market. The Act is expected to free up banking and financial norms that forbid the use of electronically generated documents and thereby slow down the process of fund transfers. A physical signature will no longer berequired to make a payment, for instance. The party8217;s digital ID, transmitted over the Internet, will do.
This sotto voce call to lawlessness implies that the Internet sector is not entirely confident of the government8217;s ability to frame a sensible code for this area. The Net is achannel through which billions of dollars can flow into and out of India. But the legal luminaries who have even a ghost of a clue about it can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It appears that the Internet law in India will develop on a case-by-case, blunder-by-blunder basis. The key issues will be the protection of intellectual property, legalising electronic commerce and drawing the line where freedom of speech becomes obscenity. Unfortunately, the last issue invariably gets first place on any government8217;s priority list. The first time the Internet made news was when a few paedophiles were found on it. Even today, the US Right makes political capital by claiming to protect American children from a largely imaginary threat. India should guard against going for the wrong priorities.
Censorship is generally a bad idea and anyway, there are more important issues at hand. For instance, Indian criminal law depends on primary and secondary evidence. On a distributed network, it is not always clear which iswhich. The law of evidence will therefore have to change, and eventually, the Net will force a revaluation of the entire machinery of justice.
