Digital Family Issue 89 November 2013 November 2013 | Page 2
1 to 30th November 2013
Cyber Defamation
Dr Harold D’costa
W
ith cyber threat looming across the world and the
exponential increase in cybercrimes, one of the most
pivotal crimes grown is cyber slandering or cyber
defamation. With no proper rules and regulations set in the domain of freedom of speech in the cyber world, there are some
websites, which are taking undue advantage of it.
Cyber defamation is a crime conducted in cyberspace
mostly through the medium of Internet with an aim to defame
a person or a company. With increasing use of Internet around
the globe, the graph of cyber defamation has shown a growth of
almost 52% in 2013 as compared to 2012. Defamation is basically causing injury to the reputation of a person or a company
using false statements or actions. It can be also described as an
attack on good faith name and reputation of a person or company by someone who is not in favor that person or company
and thus want to float some negative message in the society or
market. Defamation is considered to be a crime in almost all the
countries of the world including India.
In the last 6 months there were several cases of defamatory contents being posted on www.consumercomplaints.in. In
one of the complaint / query received by us was one of the
well-known organization related to health fitness in Pune. The
complaint was that there were defamatory and derogative contents posted by ex-employee of the organization. The company
summoned the ex-employee and on enquiry it was found that
he had never posted any contents and his name and identity
was misused to post obscene contents on the website. The contents posted were not only related to professional disputes but
also very
obscene personal information related
to a lady
working in the organization. The
contents
posted almost resulted in the lady
ting suicide.
commitIn a case a MNC in Mumbai
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