Cyber pornography in India and its implication on cyber café operators

Cyber pornography plays an accessory role in negative social issues such as child abuse, violence against women, rape, inequality, relationship and family breakdown, youth crime, promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases. Cyberspace and the pornographic matter transmitted through it have created challenges for India’s antiquated laws. The lack of jurisdictional boundaries and the sheer volume of traffic that the Internet can handle, as well as the potential for anonymity have resulted in a complete lack of control over what appears on the Web at the click of a mouse button. Before there was no liability of a cyber café owner but with the introduction of the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008, the responsibilities of Cyber Café owners have only increased. This paper deals with the Cyber pornography, its legal implications and the liability of cyber café owner under the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008.     

Privacy and the precautionary principle

The precautionary principle – which implies that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing protective measures – has been adopted as a standard of environmental and health protection in international and European legislation. This article offers an overview of the precautionary principle as a legal standard applicable to European privacy and data protection legislation. For this reason, it takes particularly into account the guidelines of this legislation as well as the privacy impact assessment framework, raised by the European Commission through the Recommendation on Radio-Frequency Identification applications. In brief, the article stresses the role of the precautionary principle in improving privacy protection through liability, prudence and transparency.     

Genetic and Environmental Overlap between Low Self-Control and Delinquency

Low self-control has emerged as a consistent and strong predictor of antisocial and delinquent behaviors. Using the twin subsample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), genetic analyses were conducted to examine the genetic and environmental contributions to low self-control and offending as well as to their relationship with one another. The results revealed that low self-control and criminal behaviors are influenced by genetic and nonshared environmental factors with the effects of shared environmental factors being negligible. In addition, the co-variation between low self-control and criminal behaviors appears to be largely due to common genetic and nonshared environmental factors operating on both phenotypes. The implications of these findings on the current understanding of Gottfredson and Hirschi??s general theory of crime are discussed.     

Recognition of Early Myocardial Infarction by Immunohistochemical Staining with Cardiac Troponin‐I and Complement C9*

Abstract: The diagnosis of early myocardial infarction (MI) after death, especially in the first few hours (c. 6 h) after the onset of MI, poses a challenge to the forensic pathologists. During this time, the damaged myocardium does not show grossly identifiable morphological changes and may not be recognized even with routine histological microscopic examination. However, the infarcted cardiac tissue releases certain chemicals that can be detected microscopically, two of these being cardiac troponin‐I (CT‐I) and complement C9 (C9). This study utilizes the importance of these two biomarkers immunohistochemically in an attempt to identify this early phase of MI. This study reveals that the early phase of MI of <6 h duration may be detected through immunohistochemical staining with CT‐I and C9. The ischemic/infarcted cardiac myofibers in the <6 h group display reduced/absent CT‐I staining as well as positive C9 staining.     

Judges,Litigants, and the Design of Courts

Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological proclivities, nullifying the effect of judge ideology. This analysis focuses on reconciling expectations about the effects of judge ideology and litigant strategies by examining their contingent nature and the conditioning effects of institutional design. The analysis examines state supreme courts from 1995–1998 to identify empirical evidence supporting both perspectives. While some state supreme courts have discretionary dockets allowing judges greater opportunities to exercise their ideology, others lack discretionary docket control, making dockets and outcomes largely litigant driven. Support for each perspective largely hinges on this fundamental feature of institutional design.     

Can hyperlinks and digital rights management secure affordable access to information?

Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMs) related control mechanism, which are analogous to and augment the exclusive rights, have been the subject of debate since the early 1980s. DRMs, which function like an electronic security guard that ‘never leaves its post, never takes a break and never sleeps,¹ can invade the privacy of individuals, prevent competition and/or control access to a work that is not or is no longer copyright protected. Hyperlinks are citations of an electronic address, but when clicked they navigate the user to the source of further information, including codes circumventing DRMs. This article accepts that the excesses of DRMs can outreach copyright and/or contract law, but argues that DRMs provide an opportunity for innovative business models, which can both protect digital works and promote free use of hyperlinks. Part 1 outlines the background and legislative provisions related to DRMs. It contrasts the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) 1996,² Articles 11 and 12, with corresponding provisions found in the implementing legislation of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998,³ and the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) 2001.⁴ It also examines the intellectual property aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Europe's Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).⁵ Part 2 debates opposing academic opinion and comments on case law relating to DRMs, including the use of hyperlinks as a way of trafficking circumvention technology and/or facilitating unauthorised access to a copyright work. It assesses the extent to which DRMs might inhibits the development of new products, prevents competition, or invades the privacy of individuals, and points to the opportunities a consumer group-rightholder negotiated model end user licence can offer. Part 3 concludes that DRMs bolsters the clutches of the rightholder, but reduce unauthorised access to information thus minimising revenue loss, which can make hyperlinked ‘consumer’ access to information ‘affordable,’ or even free.     

Will the European Commission be able to standardise legal technology design without a legal method?

Privacy by Design (PbD) is a kind of precautionary legal technology design. It takes opportunities for fundamental rights without creating risks for them. Now the EU Commission “promised” to implement PbD with Art. 23(4) of its proposal of a General Data Protection Regulation. It suggests setting up a committee that can define technical standards for PbD. However the Commission did not keep its promise. Should it be left to the IT security experts who sit in the committee but do not have the legal expertise, to decide on our privacy or, by using overly detailed specifications, to prevent businesses from marketing innovative products? This paper asserts that the Commission's implementation of PbD is not acceptable as it stands and makes positive contributions for the work of a future PbD committee so that the Commission can keep its promise to introduce precautionary legal technology design.     

Data attack of the cybercriminal: Investigating the digital currency of cybercrime

It is increasingly argued that the primary motive of the cybercriminal and the major reason for the continued growth in cyber attacks is financial gain. In addition to the direct financial impact of cybercrime, it can also be argued that the digital data and the information it represents that can be communicated through the Internet, can have additional intrinsic value to the cybercriminal. In response to the perceived value and subsequent demand for illicit data, a sophisticated and self-sufficient underground digital economy has emerged. The aim of this paper is to extend the author’s earlier research that first introduced the concept of the Cybercrime Execution Stack by examining in detail the underlying data objectives of the cybercriminal. Both technical and non-technical law enforcement investigators need the ability to contextualise and structure the illicit activities of the cybercriminal, in order to communicate this understanding amongst the wider law enforcement community. By identifying the potential value of electronic data to the cybercriminal, and discussing this data in the context of data collection, data supply and distribution, and data use, demonstrates the relevance and advantages of utilising an objective data perspective when investigating cybercrime.     

Protecting the privacy and security of sensitive customer data in the cloud

The global ubiquity of cloud computing may expose consumers' sensitive personal data to significant privacy and security threats. A critical challenge for the cloud computing industry is to earn consumers' trust by ensuring adequate privacy and security for sensitive consumer data. Regulating consumer privacy and security also challenges government enforcement of data protection laws that were designed with national borders in mind. From an information privacy perspective, this article analyses how well the regulatory frameworks in place in Europe and the United States help protect the privacy and security of sensitive consumer data in the cloud. It makes suggestions for regulatory reform to protect sensitive information in cloud computing environments and to remove regulatory constraints that limit the growth of this vibrant new industry.     

European Court of Justice rules on the protection of databases under the Database Directive (96/9/EC)

The European Court of Justice has ruled on the circumstances in which databases may be protected by the Database Directive. In a decision that renders the protection of databases a narrow concept, the ECJ appears to have introduced a new requirement that a database must comprise its author's “creative ability” in order to qualify for protection as a copyright work.