New Internet rules: Govt asks why critics were silent on draft

He said the government cannot allow complete insulation to anyone from any illegitimate activity which involves a body or person and hence the rules were framed to fix the liability on service providers,intermediaries,bodies looking after details of users,and users.

The rules were made to define that liability and restrict that liability and that has been precisely done, Chandrashekhar clarified.

The new IT rules notified in the Gazette of India on April 11 allow the government agencies to obtain sensitive information of users like their passwords,sexual orientation,medical records,bank account details etc from service providers.

These details could be demanded by the law enforcement agencies for verification of identity,or for prevention,detection,investigation,including cyber incidents,prosecution,and punishment of offences after getting due authorisation from the government.

The procedure adopted by the agencies can be either through the government approval or by court orders mandating them to seek such personal details in case of investigation or prosecution in cases.

Chandrashekhar said these information could be accessed by the government agencies only under legal authorisation and for lawful purpose.

Chandrashekhar refuted industry apprehensions on another rule which mandates that any objectionable content on a website or a computer should be removed within 36 hours of it being noticed.

This rule has been criticised by the industry as companies fear that they will have to increase manpower to keep a watch on the content being posted on their portals or servers,especially when most websites are becoming interactive.

THE NEW RULES

Such rules and regulations,terms and conditions or user agreement shall inform the users of computer resource not to host,display,upload,modify,publish,transmit,update or share any information that

a belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right to;

b is grossly harmful,harassing,blasphemous,defamatory,obscene,pornographic,paedophilic,libellous,invasive of anothers privacy,hateful,or racially,ethnically objectionable,disparaging,relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling,or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever;

c harm minors in any way;

d infringes any patent,trademark,copyright or other proprietary rights;

e violates any law for the time being in force;

f deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of such messages or communicates any information which is grossly offensive or menacing in nature;

g impersonate another person;

h contains software viruses or any other computer code,files or programs designed to interrupt,destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource