Software expert tried to take revenge against a women, who turned down his marriage proposal, falls into cyber crime cell net. Engineer had put obscene profiles of the victim on various networking sites like Facebook and Orkut and also sent letter through post containing morphed pictures of the girl, with written message in Telgu, which formed the basic evidence and led to his arrest by Hyderabad Police.

He would be punished under various provisions of Information Technology Act, especially section 67, which provides for publishing of obscene material in electronic form and Indian Penal Code !

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All stakeholders are hereby informed that the provisions regarding stamp duty payment on Form No. 1, Memorandum of Association, Articles of Association, Form No. 5 and Form No. 44 electronically, at the time of their e-filing through MCA portal (www.mca.gov.in) in respect of the States and Union Territories mentioned below, shall be mandatory with effect from 01st April 2010. Please refer Notifications Number GSR 642(E) and SO 2276(E) dated 07-09-2009 and SO 3314(E) dated 31-12-2009 issued by the Ministry.

List of States and Union Territories:

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

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Notification: http://www.mca.gov.in/Ministry/notification/pdf/GSR_642%28E%29_9Sept2009.pdf

In the Companies (Electronic Filing and Authentication of Documents) Rules, 2006, in rule 3, in sub-rule (1), after the proviso, the following proviso shall be inserted, namely :-

“ Provided further that if stamp duty on such documents is paid electronically through Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal www.mca.gov.in, in such case, the company shall not be required to make physical submissition of such documents, in addition to their submission in the electronic form:

Provided also that in respect of certain documents filed under the Companies Act, 1956 which are not covered for payment of stamp duty through Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal, and stamp duty payable on such documents in respective state is equal to or less than one hundred rupees, the company shall scan such stamped documents
complete in all respects and shall file electronically for evidencing by the Registrar and shall not be required to submit such documents, except those which are required to be filed for compounding of offences under clasue (a) of sub-section (4) of section 621A of the Companies Act, 1956, in the physical form separately:

Provided also that the company shall retain such documents duly stamped in original for a minimum period of three years from the date of filing of such documents and shall be required to produce the same as and when the same is required for inspection and verification by the competent authority being the Collector of Stamps of respective State or Union territory or the Registrar”.

In the Travel Portal matter, Travelocity has filed an FIR with Gurgaon Poilce against CEO, Cleartrip and former MD of Desiya alleging criminal breach of trust, data theft, cheating, criminal misappropriation and criminal conspiracy. Copy of FIR reads as follows:

“Taneja had allegedly passed on the company’s intellectual property, trade secrets, sensitive data, proprietary technology source codes, their entire hotel business model and projections to Crighton including an excel file named ‘Hotels Growth Model.xls’. It further states that Taneja was terminated from Desiya on 19th September 2009.”

It is further alleged that as a result of the Data Theft, Travelocity is expected to see sharp fall in revenues upto 15%, i.e. approx Rs 200 million in the next year. (source)

In the second such matter, it is reported that JustDial has obtained injunction against Infomedia 18 Limited for running website www.askme.in, as JustDial has alleged that Infomedia 18 Limited had copied former’s database onto it’s newly launched website: www.askme.in, thereby violating JustDial’s database copyrights.

The injunction was granted exparte by the Hon’ble High Court and further order has been made for search and seizure to be carried out at Infomedia’s Delhi and Mumbai offices, as prima-facie case was made out by the Just Dial officials.

Basically, Askme.in was advertised/marketed in 2009 on a large scale by Infomedia extensively to it’s new and existing customer… and further even Infomedia yellow pages 2009-10 publication was delayed by over 7 months, i.e. till December 2009. The reason was stated that they are in the process of launching a new product called askme.in, which would help customers make more profits. Though, the delay by Infomedia 18 Limited also lead to cancellation of many advertisements, including Archer Softech’s Advertisement… as the purpose of advertisement was defeated by such a long delay !

The accused was a gold certified partner of Microsft. He was obtaining Pirated software CDs, packaging material and fake certificate of Authencity (COAs) from China, which were used for packing of manipulated genuine softwares obtained locally and for further sale. The accused has been also alleged to have abusing the “Microsoft Activation Downgrade Programme”, by obtaining WIN XP keys from Microsoft in the name of downgrading of VISTA to XP but instead used these keys on counterfieted software and sell them in the market.

The case has been registered under Indian Penal Code, Information Technology (Amendment) Act 2008 and Copyright Act 1957.

And ofcourse these kind of action from Microsoft Company are not something new. Microsoft has actively implementing various measures in India since the last 3-4 years to curb piracy, which includes making calls/visits at various software company offices to check upon the genuinity of Microsoft Products. And in some cases conducting raids with the help of Police / Special organizations like  BSA.

Many such cases have come up in various courts in India but mostly they end up in settlement (where ever allowed), as the accused have no way out but to pay up 4-5 times of the cost of softwares as penalty. Though, recently Microsoft was fined for filing of piracy cases without jurisdiction. Details below…

Related Links:

• Microsoft wants to curb pirate menace (BSA Statistics)
• Microsoft fined for using `money power’ (case filed for piracy at Delhi High Court without jurisidction)

The Information Technology Act was enacted in the year 2000 with a view to give a fillip to the growth of electronic based transactions, to provide legal recognition for e-commerce and e-transactions, to facilitate e-governance, to prevent computer based crimes and ensure security practices and procedures in the context of widest possible use of information technology worldwide.

With proliferation of information technology enabled services such as e-governance, e-commerce and e-transactions; data security, data privacy and implementation of security practices and procedures relating to these applications of electronic communications have assumed greater importance and they required harmonization with the provisions of the Information Technology Act. Further, protection of Critical Information Infrastructure is pivotal to national security, economy, public health and safety, thus it had become necessary to declare such infrastructure as protected system, so as to restrict unauthorised access.

Further, a rapid increase in the use of computer and Internet has given rise to new forms of crimes like, sending offensive emails and multimedia messages, child pornography, cyber terrorism, publishing sexually explicit materials in electronic form, video voyeurism, breach of confidentiality and leakage of data by intermediary, e-commerce frauds like cheating by personation – commonly known as phishing, identity theft, frauds on online auction sites, etc. So, penal provisions were required to be included in the Information Technology Act, 2000. Also, the Act needed to be technology-neutral to provide for alternative technology of electronic signature for bringing harmonization with Model Law on Electronic Signatures adopted by United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).

Keeping in view the above, Government had introduced the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 in the Lok Sabha on 15th December 2006. Both Houses of Parliament passed the Bill on 23rd December 2008. Subsequently the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 received the assent of President on 5th February 2009 and was notified in the Gazette of India.

Source: http://pibmumbai.gov.in/scripts/detail.asp?releaseId=E2009PR1153

Download a copy of Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 here

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Further, our team of Cyber Law Consultants and Legal Experts can help you to make your websites cyber law compliant. We can also help you to put up a disclaimer & Privacy Policy for your website to minimize your liability in case of any violation of law by a third-party user. Contact here…

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