India to amend IT Act to fight cyber porn, crime

NEW DELHI, INDIA: As cyber porn in many forms is posing a serious threat to the society, the Government of India has finally decided to bring about an amendment in the IT Act 2000 to make the law more stringent in dealing with such crimes.

This was informed by the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, A. Raja, at Parliament today.

As per the crime data maintained by National Crime records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 88, 69, and 99 cases of obscene publication/transmission in electronic from (under IT Act, 2000) were registered in the year 2005, 2006, 2007 respectively.

The Government has introduced the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 in Parliament, which inter alia provides a legal framework for prevention of new forms of cyber crimes.

Publishing of material containing sexually explicit act in electronic form, video voyeurism, breach of confidentiality and leakage of data by service providers, e-commerce frauds through impersonation commonly known as phishing, identity theft and offensive messages through communication service, come under the definition of cyber crime.

The minister also said that the Government has issued 122 new Unified Access Services (UAS) licenses in 22 service areas of the country during the year 2008, to increase the number of telecom operators in the country.

Now 12 to 14 telecom access services providers are licensed in all the 22 service areas in the country. There is no cap on number of access services licenses in a service area.

Raja added that the Government envisages induction of telecom operators for 3G Mobile and BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) services as per guidelines issued on August 1 2008.

According to another information given by the minister, the net profit from the state-owned telecom operator, BSNL, has come down during the current financial year.

While the net profit during 2005-06 was Rs 8939.70 crore, it was Rs 7805.87 crore in 2006-07 and Rs 3009.39 crore in 2007-08 according to a statement made by A.Raja.

The net profit made by MTNL for the corresponding period is as follows: Rs 580.20 crore, Rs 681.74 crore and Rs 586.89 crore.