Child porn viewers to be jailed
New IT Act broadens list of offences
By Jayant Mishra in Mumbai @ Monday, February 16, 2009 9:11 AM
Browsing child pornography sites is to become an offence in India, along with the creation or transmission of child pornography.
The newly-proposed Information Technology bill, which is awaiting presidential assent, will punish anyone publishing, creating, exchanging, downloading or browsing any electronic depiction of children in an "obscene or indecent or sexually explicit manner". Offenders are liable to five years of imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1,000,000.
This is the first time in nine years that the bill has been revised. Other changes include bringing cyber terrorism, identity theft and violation of privacy into the domain of cyber crime. Critics of the bill say that it will enable the government to snoop into citizens’ computers while investigating "any offence".
Section 67 of the existing act deals with "publishing obscene information in electronic form", but does not specifically define "pornography" or make it an offence. Child pornography is not even mentioned. But the revised avatar, Section 67B, proposes specifically to punish involvement in sexually explicit content that depicts children. It will also be an offence to "cultivate, entice or induce children to online relationship with other children for a sexual act."
Cybercrime experts believe that once the bill is introduced it will have a huge positive impact. The only fear is that innocent users who accidentally open a site could be branded offenders. Source
Monday, February 16, 2009
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