Information Society
10:54 AM Edit This 0 Comments »Meaning of Information Society
Information is now a vital resource in development activities of any society. Material Machine and Energy were considered as dominant factors which influence the societal development. The term Information Society can be expressed in different concepts. In a common parlance, it refers to a growing materially affluent service society where information rather than material, machine or energy is the dominant technology. It attempts towards a society characterized by increasing responsiveness towards individual human needs and towards presentation of ecological harmony and balance.
Characteristics of Information Society
The following can be described as some characteristics of an information society.
· Most of the members are engaged in productive pursuits that are knowledge intensive, knowledge generating and knowledge based.
· A communication network that freely circulates information so that this information is consistently, efficiently and effectively acted upon in making of choices.
Thus, in an information society the dominant factor for its development is information. Almost everything is decided on the basis of information, which has been provided by means of an information network. The decision pattern of the members of the society is now blended with the information he receives now, and the traditional concepts of values.
Theft of information
Theft is an offence under all laws. A person will be guilty of theft where he dishonestly appropriates the property of another with the intension of permanently depriving the owner of that property. Oxford dictionary defines theft as “dishonest appropriation of another’s property with intent-to deprive him or her of it permanently.” It is the felonious taking and carrying away of the property of another. Therefore, for theft, there should be a property and the intension to deprive the owner of permanently. The owner losses possession of the property and the thief acquires the possession.
Property means Right of Action for things that can be exchanged. Important types of property include real property (land), personal property (other physical possessions), and intellectual property (rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.). A property is referred as something owned. It is defined as including ‘money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other incorporeal property. The first question with regard to the information theft is that, is it possible to lose the possession of information? With the special feature of information that it cannot be taken away from the mind of a person, it is very difficult to prove the condition of depriving the owner of property. Unlike the situation where, for example, a car is stolen, possession of the information will not be lost. So, a counter proposition can be that of the exclusive possession of knowledge or information. The second question is that whether information might be regarded as property for the purpose of the law of theft. To a certain extent this question is resolved and accepted that information may be considered as a property.
On the basis of the above prepositions, it can come to a conclusion that, information theft is possible. There have been a growing number of cases of information theft over the past few years. While more and more electronic security measures have been going up to protect people’s possessions and information, these new technologies have bugs and design flaws that are opening up whole new worlds for a technologically advanced criminal. Information thefts are done in different ways. Some of them are summarized below.
Credit Card Number Theft
This type of theft is done by creating a quick and dirty web site (which could be hosted for free, and anonymously) advertising some fictional product, and including a form for buying online. Instantly the perpetrators would have a list of credit card numbers linked with names and mailing addresses, ready to use for anything they want. People are using credit cards for more and more of their purchases as time go on. This is opening up a larger and larger arena for a credit card fraud. Credit cards are especially easy to use fraudulently, because they require no extra identification number to use. All that a thief needs is pure information-they don’t need the card, but just the number on the card. Recently, with people spending more on purchases transacted over the internet, credit card fraud is becoming easier. When a user visited to this web site and giving his credit card number, they will be stored by the site and would be used for anything they want to do.
ATM Spoofing
This is done by setting up a complete fake ATM machine inside a shopping centre. It looked and worked just like a real one, except that after giving it your card and typing in your PIN, it would refuse you service saying it was out of order. It then had a record of the card and PIN numbers of all the people who tried to use the machine. In one such reported case, the thieves then used legitimate ATM machines all over town to withdraw over $3,000 from these accounts.
Pin Capturing
This is done by hiding a video camera aimed at the keys on the ATM machine. After each successful PIN number identification that they recorded, the thief would go to check for a discarded receipt at the ATM. If he found one, had the card number and the PIN number.
Database Theft
There are large databases of customers’ information built up slowly and legally by mild-mannered, legitimate internet companies. For example, BMG Music Service lets customers give their credit card numbers when they sign up, so they don’t need to bother each time they make a purchase. There are thousands of users of this service, many of whom likely use this feature. The information of customers is hacked from these databases.
Cyberspace
The word ‘cyberspace’ was coined by William Gibson in his science fiction, Necromancer, published in 1984. It has subsequently become widely used as a means of representing the clear-or virtual-location within which electronic activities are undertaken. In an electronic communicating system, it is very difficult to locate the exact place of conversation occurred. For example, a contract is made by two parties through a telephone conversation. Each party’s words will be received by the other and there are rules regarding time and place of contract for the two ends ofthete1ephone call. Still, the overall conservation does not occur at either end of the connection. It virtually takes place anywhere in the telephone line between the parties of conversation. The imaginary location where the words of the parties meet in conversation is what is referred to as cyberspace. Thus, Cyber Space is a place where entry is not bound by geographic boundaries. Any person who lives in this Cyber Space is a part of the community referred to as the Netizen.
In the physical world today, there are requirements for documents to be in writing and for hand - written signatures. Due to the rapid development of electronic commerce, these requirements should be translated into the electronic realm. In order to get legal validity for this type of translation, there should be proper legislation by way of amendment of the existing ones. The advent of e-commerce and the use of the digital medium as an alternative to the physical have created some new legal issues where there are no clear answers.
The users of information technology must have trust in the security of information and communication and communications infrastructures, networks and systems. They should have trust in the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data on them. They should also have trust in the ability to prove the origin and receipt of data. Since communication and transactions occurring over a faceless network, there is a need of reliable methods to authenticate a person’s identity and to ensure the integrity of the electronically transmitted documents.
Cyber law is a term used to describe the legal issues related to’ use of communications technology, particularly “cyberspace”, i.e. the Internet It is less a distinct field of law in the way that property or contract are, as it is an intersection of many legal fields, including intellectual property, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction. In essence, cyber law is an attempt to apply laws designed for the physical world to human activity on the Internet.
Jurisdiction and Sovereignty
One of the principles in case of laws of lands is with regard to the jurisdiction and sovereignty. A law can be enforced by an authority that has jurisdiction on the act or place and is sovereign. Issues of jurisdiction and sovereignty have quickly come to the fore in the era of the Internet. The Internet does not tend to make geographical and jurisdictional boundaries clear, but Internet users remain in physical jurisdictions and are subject to laws independent of their presence on the Internet. As such, a single transaction may involve the laws of at least three jurisdictions:
1. The laws of the state/nation in which the user resides
2. The laws of the state/nation that apply where the server hosting the transaction is located; and
3. The laws of the state/nation which apply to the person or business with whom the transaction takes place.
So a user in India conducting a transaction with another user in Britain through a server in USA could theoretically be subject to the laws of all three countries as they relate to the transaction at hand.
Jurisdiction is an aspect of state sovereignty and it refers to judicial, legislative and administrative competence. Although jurisdiction is an aspect of sovereignty, it is not coextensive with it. The laws of a nation may have extra-territorial impact extending the jurisdiction beyond the sovereign and territorial limits of that nation. This is particularly problematic as the medium of the Internet does not explicitly recognize sovereignty and territorial limitations. There is no uniform, international jurisdictional law of universal application, and such questions are generally a matter of conflict of laws, particularly private international law. For example, where the contents of a web site are legal in one country may be illegal in another. So, there should be a uniform jurisdictional code, otherwise, the legal practitioners are generally left with a conflict of law issue.
Another major problem of cyber law lies in whether to treat the Internet as if it were physical space (and thus subject to a given jurisdiction’s laws) or to act as if the Internet is a world unto itself (and therefore free of such restraints). There are strong arguments for and against of the above two perspective. John Perry Harlow proposes a new perspective known as Declaration of Cyber secession which is the perspective of absolute free to inhabit with no legal constraints. Though theoretically attractive, cyber secession initiatives have had little real impact on the Internet or the laws governing it. In practical terms, a user of the Internet is subject to the laws of the state or nation within which he or she goes online. Simply put, legal conduct in one nation may be decidedly illegal in another. In fact, even different standards concerning the burden of proof in a civil case can cause jurisdictional problems.
Contract Act under Cyber Law
In laws of contract, place of contract is important. The law of the place of contract is applicable to that contract. Similarly, the geographical location where conduct occurs is one of the major factors determining which country’s laws are applicable to the activities. The global network of communication actually made some problems with regard to the national boundaries. Hence the need for a new legal regime in cyberspace is argued. Although there is a clear role of some form of industry self regulation, this technique leave unrepresented the vast numbers of individual who deal with Internet Service Providers and the increasing number of organizations offering goods and services over the Internet Laws relating to contract, tort, defamation, evidence, broadcasting, media, data protection, intellectual property all have a role to play as do provisions of civil and criminal law. In fact, the inhabitants of cyberspace, depending upon the nature of their activities, may theoretically be subject to the jurisdiction of virtually all of the world’s legal systems.
Offer, Acceptance and legal enforceability are considered as most important factors of a contract. The growth of e-commerce on the Internet depends, to a large extent, on the confidence of traders in forming legally enforceable contracts online. The key activities associated with the formation of an enforceable contract do take part on the Internet, namely, the offer is communicated by the offeror, and acceptance is received by the offeror from the acceptor. An offer can be communicated orally or in writing; and in the e-commerce environment, it is through Internet. Electronic acceptance of the contract through e-mail, e- form is valid, in much the same way that a fax message is. The offeror can display terms and conditions as a legal notice, on his website. Visitors to the site, who choose to proceed further, even after reading the notice, may be construed to accept the conditions imposed by it. However timing of acceptance of the offer determines when the contract is formal. In this case, the e-mail of acceptance has to reach the offeror who may say that the contract will get formed only after its receipt.
In case of problems about jurisdiction, the problems are about the jurisdiction of the parties and jurisdiction of the website. These leads to the issues related to the identity of parties and the role ‘pf’ digital signatures on the Internet. Another problem is related to the establishment of competency of the parties to enter into a contract. All these issues and a few others are critical to the creation of an enforceable electronic contract. In Contract Act, when the offeree posts an acceptance, it becomes valid irrespective of whether it reached to the offeror or not. Some of the issues are dealt with the IT Act, 2000. It covers the attribution of electronic records, Acknowledgment of receipt, time and place of dispatch and receipt of electronic record.
Section 11 to 13 of the IT Act relate to the formation of an online contact between two parties that is solely mediated electronically. The originator of the electronic record sends it as a message which is deemed to have been received by the addressee, if he sends an acknowledgment, or conducts him in a manner so as to let the originator know that the message has been received by him. The two parties can agree on the formation of the contract depending on whether the acknowledgment of receipt of the electronic record by addressee has been stipulated as a condition by the originator. It has been mandated, and then the contract will be deemed to be formed only after receipt of the acknowledgment from the addressee. In the alternative case, if the originator does not receive any acknowledgment, or any indication that the addressee has received the electronic record sent by him, the originator can re-transmit the message stating that the time frame by which the acknowledgment should come, failing which the originator can treat the electronic record as thought it had never been sent.
The time of dispatch of the electronic record is deemed to be the time at which the electronic record enters a computer resource outside the control of the originator. Likewise, the time of receipt of an electronic record is taken to be the time it enters the computer resource designated by the addressee. These sections further clarify that the place of business of both the parties will be taken to be the place(s) where the electronic record will be deemed to have been originated, and received, respectively. This will be the case irrespective of where the computer resources of both parties may be located.
Contracts of Adhesion
Contract of adhesion is a contract you didn’t really bargain over in any way, but which was presented as more of a take-it-or-Leave-it offer. This type of contract is often offered by certain websites dealing with some products. For example, in case of a website providing news letter say, ABC.com, puts the following message at its web site: “You may obtain a one-year subscription to our newsletter ABC News for the special low price of Rs 150.00 for each monthly issue, simply by filling in your name and e-mail address on the form below and then clicking the ‘SUBSCRIBE’ button. By subscribing, you agree to the terms and conditions set forth in our Subscriber’s Contract; to read the Subscriber’s Contract, click on ‘CONTRACT TERMS’ below.” Now, suppose you fill in your name and e-mail address and click SUBSCRIBE, but you don’t actually take the time to look at, let alone read, the Subscriber’s Contract but at that moment you have a contract with ABC. There was an offer [to deliver the weekly newsletter to you], a specification of the behavior that the offeror deems to constitute acceptance of the offer [clicking on the SUBSCRIBE button], and consideration for the contract [the offeror will deliver the newsletter to you and you will pay Rs.150.00 per issue]. This “click wrap contract” is an example of what the law calls a “contract of adhesion.
Generally speaking, adhesion contracts are legally enforceable. Actually we enter into contracts like this all the time - e.g., when we buy something from the supermarket (without any chance to negotiate about the price of the item), or order some item from a restaurant, or park our car in a commercial lot, or undertake any of the other innumerable transactions where we agree, in effect, to pay the asking price for some good or service by virtue of some act of availing ourselves of the good or service.
But the question is: What are the terms of the contract? In particular, have you accepted the terms of the Subscriber’s Contract even if you haven’t read it? If you do something that is, prohibited by the Subscriber’s Contract, can ABC sue you for breach of contract? The basic principle of contract is the consensus ad idem. That is identity of mind. In Contract Acts there are provisions for the breach of contract. In those Acts also, the contract made in the above manner is interpreted as valid and breach of contract attracts remedy. In cyber-laws also the Contract of adhesion finds a place.
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