IT Act to be amended to prevent obscenity

The Government is proposing further amendments in IT Act, 2000 that provides punishment for publishing or transmitting in electronic form any material which contains sexually explicit act or conduct etc. Publishing and transmission of information, which is obscene, in electronic form is an offence under section 67 of Information Technology Act, 2000.

As per the crime data maintained by National Crime records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 88, 69, and 99 cases of obscene publication/transmission in electronic from (under IT Act, 2000) were registered in the year 2005, 2006, 2007.

The Government has introduced the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 in the Parliament, which inter alia provides a legal framework for prevention of new forms of cyber crimes like publishing of material containing sexually explicit act in electronic form, video voyeurism, breach of confidentiality and leakage of data by service providers, e-commerce frauds through impersonation commonly known as phishing, identity theft and offensive messages through communication service.

This information was given by the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Shri A. Raja in the Lok Sabha today.