AREAS OF CYBER LAW

1.There is intellectual property in general, including copyright, rules on fair use, and special rules on copy protection for digital media, and circumvention of such schemes. 2.The area of software patents is controversial, and still evolving in Europe and [1] elsewhere. 3.The related topics of software licenses, end user license agreements, free software licenses and open-source licenses can involve discussion of product liability, professional liability of individual developers, warranties, contract law, trade secrets and intellectual property. 4.In various countries, areas of the computing and communication industries are regulated often strictly by government bodies. 5.There are rules on the uses to which computers and computer networks may be put, in particular there are rules on unauthorized access, data privacy and spamming. 6.There are also limits on the use of encryption and of equipment which may be used to defeat copy protection schemes. The export of Hardware and Software between certain states is also controlled. 7.There are laws governing trade on the Internet, taxation, consumer protection, and advertising. 8.There are laws on censorship versus freedom of expression, rules on public access to government information, and individual access to information held on them by private bodies. There are laws on what data must be retained for law enforcement, and what may not be gathered or retained, for privacy reasons. 10.In certain circumstances and jurisdictions, computer communications may be used in evidence, and to establish contracts. New methods of tapping and surveillance made possible by computers have wildly differing rules on how they may be used by law enforcement bodies and as evidence in court. 11.Computerized voting technology, from polling machines to internet and mobilephone voting, raise a host of legal issues. 12.Some states limit access to the Internet, by law as well as by technical means.

DIGITAL SIGNATURE

Definition: A digital signature or e-signature for short (not to be confused with a digital certificate) is an electronic signature that can be utilized to authenticate the identity of the sender of a message or the signer of a document, and certainly to ensure that the original content of the message or document that has been sent is the same or unchanged. Digital signatures are easily transportable, cannot be imitated by someone else, and can be automatically time-stamped. Meaning to say, its very efficient in view of transacting legal matters. The ability to ensure that the original signed message arrived means that the sender cannot easily repudiate it later. A digital signature can be used with any kind of message, transactions and the like, whether it is encrypted or not, simply so that the receiver can be sure of the senders identity and that the message arrived intact. A digital certificate contains the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority so that anyone can verify that the certificate is real. This indeed is so commonly observed now in internet transactions. How Digital Signatures works: Assume you were going to send the draft of a certain contract to your lawyer in another town. You want to give your lawyer the assurance that it was unchanged from what you sent and that it is really from you. Here then would be the process: 1. You copy-and-paste the contract (its a short one!) into an e-mail note. 2. Using special software, you obtain a message hash (mathematical summary) of the contract. 3. You then use a private key that you have previously obtained from a publicprivate key authority to encrypt the hash. 4. The encrypted hash becomes your digital signature of the message. (Note that it will be different each time you send a message.)

Advantages and Disadvantages of E-Signature: Just as with any technology, there will be plus and minuses. This is the way it is with anything, whether it is technology related or not. The advantages of using digital signatures include:

Imposter prevention: By using digital signatures you are actually eliminating the possibility of committing fraud by an imposter signing the document. Since the digital signature cannot be altered, this makes forging the signature impossible.

Message integrity: By having a digital signature you are in fact showing and simply proving the document to be valid. You are assuring the recipient that the document is free from forgery or false information.

Legal requirements: Using a digital signature satisfies some type of legal requirement for the document in question. A digital signature takes care of any formal legal aspect of executing the document.

Disadvantages of using digital signatures involve the primary avenue for any business: 1.COSTLY. This is because the business may have to spend more money than usual to work with digital signatures including buying certificates from certification authorities and getting the verification software. 2. security concerns, technological compatibility issues as well as money. Though the use of Digital Signatures is very powerful way to secure and authenticate a message or document, its advantages are hampered by lost or theft of keys and the use of vulnerable storage facilities. Furthermore, a number of Digital Signature standard exist which are incompatible with each other and there is a strong need of a standard through which these they can interact. Also the use of Digital Signature required additional money to be spent by the business in order to obtain Digital Signature services. This includes paying for the issuance of a Digital Signature as well as for the software that will be used to generate the Digital Signature (Bennett, 2009)