Thursday, February 26, 2009

HC Pulls up Police

The Judges directed Chennai Police Commissioner and the Joint Commissioner (North) to file a report stating under whose authority they entered the High Court premises to arrest certain accused (in connection with the attack on Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy)and at whose instance an order was issued to police and the Swift Action Force to lathicharge.
The Judges also asked the government to file a reply as to why it should not be directed to pay compensation for personal injury, damage to property and meet all expenses for immediately repairing the court premises, court halls, furniture and lawyers chambers, including that of the state counsel.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Court tells Brit man to pay $200,000 to child porn victim-US-World-The Times of India

Court tells Brit man to pay $200,000 to child porn victim-US-World-The Times of India
Senior US district judge Warren Eginton said his ruling was the first criminal case in which someone convicted of possessing illegal images — but not creating them — is required to pay restitution.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Browsing child porn will land you in jail

In its first comprehensive amendment nine years after it was first enacted, the Act proposes to bring "cyber terrorism", "identity theft" and "violation of privacy" into the domain of cyber crime. Critics of the Bill, which is awaiting Presidential assent, say it enables the government to snoop into citizens’ computers while investigating "any offence". The bill has, however, broken new ground by identifying several new offences and making them punishable.
Section 67 of the existing act deals with "publishing obscene information in electronic form". It is a generally worded section that does not specifically define "pornography" or make it an offence, and does not mention "child pornography" at all. But in its amended avatar, Section 67B proposes specifically to punish involvement in sexually explicit online or electronic 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."
Both experts noted that an offence of "cyber terrorism" punishable with life imprisonment, for instance, is a vital new addition, and that its definition is exhaustive.
Legal experts note that while the amendments don’t make it illegal to view adult porn, they do make watching child porn an offence (the law would apply to "whoever creates text or digital images, collects, seeks, browses, downloads" child porn). The fear is that the section would kick in even if sites were opened accidentally, because a computer may store information about such a site being accessed.

Lawyers on nationwide strike against CrPC amendments

The Hindu News Update Service