Legal recognition of electronic records and signatures
The first advantage of cyber law is certainty about electronic documents. Section 4 of the Information Technology Act 2000 provides that where any law requires information to be in writing or in typewritten or printed form, the requirement is satisfied if the information is rendered or made available in an electronic form and is accessible so as to be usable for a subsequent reference. Section 5 does the same for signatures: where a law requires a document to be signed, authentication by an electronic signature, affixed in the manner prescribed by the Central Government, satisfies it.
In practice this means that an e-mail, a scanned form or a digitally signed contract is not refused effect only because it is not on paper. The recognition is not unlimited: the First Schedule lists documents and transactions to which the Act does not apply, including a will, a trust, a power of attorney, a negotiable instrument other than a cheque and a contract for the sale of immovable property.
Electronic contracts
The second advantage is for commerce. Section 10A provides that where, in the formation of a contract, the communication of proposals, the acceptance of proposals and their revocation are expressed in electronic form or by means of an electronic record, the contract is not to be deemed unenforceable solely on the ground that electronic means were used. A business can therefore sell through a website and a customer can accept an offer with a click, without doubt about enforceability on that ground alone.
The chapters on attribution, acknowledgment and despatch add rules on who is taken to have sent an electronic record and when a record is treated as sent and received. Those rules answer questions that arise in every online transaction and that a paper-based law had no way of answering.
Government services online
The Act also supports electronic governance. Its provisions cover the use of electronic records and electronic signatures in government and its agencies, the retention of electronic records, the audit of documents maintained in electronic form, and the publication of rules and regulations in the Electronic Gazette. Section 9 states that these provisions do not give anyone a right to insist that a document be accepted in electronic form. The effect is to allow government departments to receive filings, issue certificates and publish notices electronically, while leaving them free to decide how far to do so.
Remedies and offences
A third advantage is that a person harmed by misuse of a computer has remedies. Section 43 makes a person who accesses a system, copies data, introduces a virus, damages or disrupts a system without permission liable to pay damages by way of compensation to the person affected, and the adjudicating officer appointed under the Act hears claims where the injury or damage does not exceed Rs 5 crore. For conduct that is dishonest or fraudulent, Chapter XI provides criminal offences, such as sections 66C and 66D on identity theft and cheating by personation, with penalties set out in the guide to the IT Act 2000.
Section 79 adds an advantage for those who run online services, giving an intermediary an exemption from liability for third party information on conditions, so that a platform is not automatically answerable for everything a user posts.
The limits of the advantages
The advantages depend on the law being kept up to date and used. Section 66A, once a source of complaint, was held unconstitutional in 2015; the personal data provisions of the Act are being replaced by the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023; and the Act itself covers only part of the subject. The other side of the question is considered in the page on the two sides of cyber law, and the definitions that underlie the Act are explained in the cyber law notes.