Cyber crime in law curricula

It may have had its share of ups and downs, but in the fast growing education industry, Information Technology still tops the list. And though there are institutes that will teach you right from programming, graphics to all about internet, there is one area that seems to have been forgotten altogether.

We have seen the best of all that the IT industry can provide us, but it is, perhaps, time to get ready to face the uglier side of Internet's fast world -- cybercrime. Well, we may have laws but the process would be absolutely incomplete till the lawyers who fight the case know the intricacies of this new crime that is emerging as a major security threat.

Which is probably why students of Delhi University's Law Centre are now praying for the introduction of the subject as part of the main curriculum.

As of now there are not many law institutes that teach cyberlaw. The National Law College at Bangalore had added cyber laws to its curriculum. As far as Delhi is concerned most lawyers wanting to learn the ropes of this emerging crime are approaching the Indian Law Institute which has been offering a six-month diploma course for some time now.

But the short-period course, say lawyers, is not really as informative as they had thought it to be. With hardly any case studies to read about, no experts to teach the subject and the subject itself still being in its nascent stage, it is not difficult to see why it is not really working.

With internet fast becoming the easy mode for business deals and other works, cases concerning transactions, contracts, security and even harassment over the net are expected to become rampant. Adding cyber law to the present curriculum, believe students, will not just prepare them better but also give people the opportunity to go for a lawyer with a good knowledge of the subject.

In fact, students of Delhi University's Law Faculty had organized seminars on the subject and planned to form a cyberlaw society. The subject will also help in legal research, feel students.

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Speaking of the IT industry, Microsoft Corporation India has launched a country-wide contest ``NET Campus challenge'' inviting students to build business applications using XML web services.

Targeted mainly at engineering and Microsoft Technical Education centres, the winner of the contest will represent India in the Asia Pacific finals at Seoul in October. Being organised by Aptech in association with the Infosys group, the contest is divided into three stages.

The first round will be a quiz that will be administered online. Twenty random questions will have to be answered in 30 minutes and around 100 teams would be shortlisted.

The second stage will have design prototyping and eight zonal winners will be selected during this stage. The eight zonal winners selected from the second round will then have to prepare the final application.

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As part of the Commonwealth Youth Programme, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) will be offering a certificate/diploma course in `Youth in Development Work''.

To be launched in January, 2002, the course will be open to students who have passed their senior secondary examinations. A one-year programme, the course will have inputs from qualified practitioners of different field interwoven into the CYP curriculum.

The Pan Commonwealth had selected IGNOU for delivering the CYP programme through its channel of distance mode to ensure a wider reach. A distance mode strategy being adopted by IGNOU for the programme is the creation of a question bank to provide parity across the region. The Common Youth Programme (CYP) has been running programmes to provide opportunities to the youth and the University is now hoping that the new question bank will act as an aid to learning rather than just making learning easy.

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The second schedule of counselling and admission for various courses offered by the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University's School of Studies and other affiliated institutions are now available on the notice Boards of the University.

The schedule is also available on the website http://ggsipu.nic.in.

-- Lakshmi Balakrishnan

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