Cyber Crimes & Law in Nepal

The worlds least developed countries including Nepal have rewarded themselves of the opportunity to rapidly develop education, health, agriculture, tourism, trade and various other sectors using Information Technology. With the large development of Information Technology the criminal activities are also increasing. In Nepal, Cyber crimes like Software Piracy, Hacking etc. are increasing. Corruption is seen in every field – From government to private organizations are using pirated CDs. Software CDs can be seen in the footpaths of Kathmandu, which has decreased the value, as well as violated the law of the cyberspace. People are crowding into these places because of the low price. People want just the CDs. Who cares about the quality and law?

Program CDs of great value are found all over the Kathmandu valley and prices range from Rs. 50-100 (U.S $0.70 -1.40), but original software costs 100 times more than that. Though this is not new to any Nepali citizen, it may also attract the attention of some foreigners visiting Nepal. “Not only Nepalese, Foreigners also take these CDs”, said one Footpath CDs seller in Kathmandu. Whenever anyone buys a new software CD, it is shared with all his friends and relatives. It has become a habit for all Nepali people to share CDs.

This problem is not limited only to CDs. In Cyber cafes, children of young ages can be seen using porn sites. The proprietor of the Café not caring about the law, they just want all his computers to be packed. Different hackers’ software can be found in each individual’s computer.

To control those criminal activities the ‘Electronic Transaction Act’ is declared by Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication in 2005 A.D. which is popularly known as Cyber Law. Laws are established and enforced by the authority, legislation, or custom of a given community, state or nation to maintain orderly coexistence. Basically, Cyber law deals with child pornography, Cyber-stalking, Cyber-scams, online fraud, software piracy and much more.

In these approximately 5 years of declaration of Cyber Law, even a single percentage of crimes are not controlled. So there are still many doubts on successful implementation. Because Nepalese think “Laws are made to be broken”. This current Cyber Law has failed to address many problems. The law is not strict enough for the holistic deception of Cyber related crimes. Problems of online media, as well as fines and imprisonment, are not as big as in the U.S. and Japan.

The effective implementation of Cyber law is now a necessity. Nepal will not be able to regulate the information technology industries without taking the international legal context into account. The main thing is that regulations are enforced. First of all, the authorities should be self-concerned before awaking the citizens. There still needs a lot of homework to be done if Nepal expects a boom in the IT sector.

Anyway this law has provided new trust to the Information Technology (IT) sector, and computer and IT professionals are hopeful that it will create a favorable situation for conducting IT business. It contains a strong provision of punishment against Cyber crimes according to the nature of the crime. As per the provisions of law, the government is fully authorized to punish Cyber criminal, an individual or institution.

Since the computing field is a dynamic one, policies and laws related to this area need to be revised periodically to reflect the changing trends.

We cannot say that Law itself will solve all the problems, but we can also think of different solutions to different problems. First of all the government need to make the people aware of all these laws and policies as soon as possible. I suggest 3 kinds of actions to secure from Cyber crimes:-

1. Company should secure their networked Information.

2. Government should assure that they can implement law.

3. Firms, governments, and civil society should work cooperatively to strengthen legal frameworks for Cyber security.

‘Most great Cyber crime in Nepal is Software Piracy so to control this problem government and private IT Companies should aware the students to use microsoft academic program(ELMS) or free/open sources software which is free of cost