By: Gunjan Thakur
In today’s world, technology is developing at an unprecedented rate. This has brought a complete turnover to our lifestyles as it has redesigned the approach of our living, our style of communication, our way of travelling, our procedure of learning and so many auxiliary changes have been brought about by these continuous technological elevations.
The scope of the cyber world is expansive; it extends from Virtual Reality applications to those that augment reality, from online social networking to online trading etc. Today there is an ever-increasing dependency on technology, particularly computing and the internet, the use of cyber world is increasing exponentially in the recent years but it has become a can of worms because of its dark side.
The cyber world has become a platform for cybercrimes. The advent of Cyber Pornography is marked with the development of the internet as it provides them with more customers. With the help of the internet, the market of pornography has escalated online. The cyberspace is now used to create, display, distribute, import, or publish pornography or obscene material. The definition and scope of Cyber Pornography vary from country to country, for example, any sexual act might be put in the category of obscenity in one country while for others it could be porn.
In India, Cyber Pornography briefly in simplified version means an act that produces or incites lust, which arouses lustful thoughts and causing a person to become immoral in character.[1] The internet is an international network, and laws regulating internet pornography are not codified yet. The legality of Cyber Pornography is ambiguous and varies from country to country as in a few countries it is legal and in a few countries, it is banned. There are countries like India also where it is kept in the grey area of law. In India, there are three acts that deal with Cyber Pornography – Information Technology Act[2] (hereinafter IT Act), Indian Penal Code[3] and Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act[4]. The acts simply state that it is legal to watch porn unless done in public, but if it is sent, publishes, sold or produced before someone else then it is illegal and even this act is penalised with imprisonment up to five years along with a fine up to one lakh rupees[5]. The IT act penalises the publication of pornography in India[6], but if there is a website, which is hosted from a country where publication of pornography is legal, then, in that case, the consumption, i.e., watching of pornography in India will be purely legal unless done in public.[7] It is because of the aforementioned case, Cyber Pornography is kept in the grey area as it questions the jurisdictional competitiveness, which means no legal action can be initiated against a website, which is hosted from some nation, where publication of Cyber Pornography is legal, the government cannot force the website to stop working. All our government can do is to ban such website from our country, but since there are thousands and thousands of such websites, all our government will be able to achieve is the failure. Moreover, the internet is such a big platform for distribution of porn where it is really difficult to administer everything, talking about pornography only it is available in so many formats to be it in the form of images, GIFs, videos etc. There have been attempts by the government to limit the pornography content on the internet but of little effect. The objective behind writing this article is to highlight the problem since it is one of the major obstacles for the justice system. This article is a step towards making the authorities aware and to put the focus on the criminal justice system to deal with the illegal, immoral and polemic side of the internet industry.
[1] Information Technology Act 2008, s 67.
[2] ibid.
[3] Indian Penal Code 1860, s 293.
[4] Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act 1986.
[5] Information Technology Act 2008, s 67.
[6] ‘Cyber Pornography and the IT Act’ < https://police.mizoram.gov.in/uploads/files/cyber-pornography-it-act.pdf> accessed 22 June 2017
[7] Nitish Chandan, ‘Pornography Rules in India’ (January 23, 2017) <http://www.cyberblogindia.in/pornography-rules-india/> accessed 22 June 2017
(Gunjan Thakur is currently a student at Army Institute of Law, Mohali)
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