Media Law Archives - Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

The Dark Web : To Regulate Or Not Regulate, That Is The Question.

[Ed Note : In an interesting read, Shweta Rao of NALSAR University of Law brings us upto speed on the debate regarding regulation of the mysterious “dark web” and provides us with a possible way to proceed as far as this hidden part of the web is concerned. ]

Human Traffickers, Whistleblowers, Pedophiles, Journalists and Lonely-Hearts Chat-room participants all find a home on the Dark Web, the underbelly of the World Wide Web that is inaccessible to the ordinary netizen. The Dark Web is a small fraction of the Deep Web, a term it is often confused with, but the distinction between the two is important.

RELIANCE JIO: REGULATORY AND PRIVACY IMPLICATIONS

Ed. Note.: This post, by Sayan Bhattacharya, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

In the world of technology dominated by a power struggle in terms of presence and absence in data circles, Reliance Jio has probably made the biggest tech news of the year with its revolutionary schemes. By adopting a loss-leader strategy of immediate loss and ultimate dominance, Reliance Jio has promised its subscribers stellar features like free voice calls, extremely cheap data packages, abolition of national roaming charges and striking down extra rates on national holidays on shifting to its network. This is set to significantly affect competition by taking India’s data scenario from a data scarcity to data abundance mode.

The Right to Be Forgotten – An Explanation

Ed. Note.: This post, by Ashwin Murthy, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

The right to be forgotten is the right of an individual to request search engines to take down certain results relating to the individual, such as links to personal information if that information is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue. For example, if a person’s name is searched on Google and certain information appears relating to that person, the person can request Google to remove that information from the search results. This has its largest application in crime and non-consensual pornography (revenge porn or the distribution of sexually explicit material depicting a person without their consent). If X committed a petty crime and a person searching X’s name finds this petty crime, it leads to an obvious negative impact to X, in terms of job prospects as well as general social stigmatisation. X can ask the providers of the search engine to remove this result, claiming his right to be forgotten. The right is not necessarily an absolute right – in its current stage of discussion it merely applies to information that is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue and not any and all information relating to the person. Further there lies a distinction between the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten – the right to privacy is of information not available to the public while the right to be forgotten is removal of information already available publicly.

Privacy – A right to GO?

Ed. Note.: This post, by Ashwin Murthy, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

For centuries rights have slowly come into existence and prominence, from the right to property to the right to vote and the right against exploitation. In the increasingly digital world of interconnection, the latest right to gain immense popularity is the right to privacy. This right entails the right to be let alone and more importantly the right to protect one’s own information – informational privacy. Thus armed with the right to privacy, one can limit what information others have access to and may use, and thus what information corporations might have or what is up on the Internet. This right to privacy comes in direct contact with applications downloaded on phones, which often ask for permissions to various information on the phone – a device which already possesses a great deal of information of the owner, including the location of the user, their phone number, their emails, their chat conversations and their photos. Applications often ask, either explicitly or in their terms and conditions, for permissions to access varying degrees of the information on the phone, sometimes in a rather unexpected fashion (such as a flashlight app asking for permissions to location), and more recently these apps have been singled out for their questionable privacy settings.

TORRENTS: THE LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS

Ed. Note.: This 101, by Kaustub Bhati, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

Have you ever used a torrent to download something not available freely? You must have. Ever wondered how it works and why there is so much fuss about it being illegal and people using it might face legal sanctions?

A torrent is typically a file sharing method in which large media files are shared between private computers by gathering different pieces of the file you want and downloading these pieces simultaneously from people who already have these files. This process increases the download speed manifold. An example would be if 5,000 people are downloading the same file then it doesn’t put much pressure on the main server itself but what happens is that every individual use contributes upload speed which in turn ensures that the file transfer is fast. The download, hence, doesn’t really take place from the main server but from the 4999 other users currently downloading. This is typically known as P2P or Peer-to-Peer sharing method.[1]