The Information Technology Act, 2000
(IT Act 2000)
Penalty and compensation for damage to computer, computer system, etc.
Chapter 9: PENALTIES, COMPENSATION AND ADJUDICATION
Section: 43
6[Penalty and compensation] for damage to computer, computer system, etc.—If any person without permission of the owner or any other person who is in charge of a computer, computer system or computer network,—
(a) accesses or secures access to such computer, computer system or computer network 7[or computer resource];
(b) downloads, copies or extracts any data, computer data base or information from such computer, computer system or computer network including information or data held or stored in any removable storage medium;
(c) introduces or causes to be introduced any computer contaminant or computer virus into any computer, computer system or computer network;
(d) damages or causes to be damaged any computer, computer system or computer network, data, computer data base or any other programmes residing in such computer, computer system or computer network;
(e) disrupts or causes disruption of any computer, computer system or computer network;
(f) denies or causes the denial of access to any person authorised to access any computer, computer system or computer network by any means;
(g) provides any assistance to any person to facilitate access to a computer, computer system or computer network in contravention of the provisions of this Act, rules or regulations made thereunder;
(h) charges the services availed of by a person to the account of another person by tampering with or manipulating any computer, computer system, or computer network;
1[ (i) destroys, deletes or alters any information residing in a computer resource or diminishes its value or utility or affects it injuriously by any means;
(j) steal, conceal, destroys or alters or causes any person to steal, conceal, destroy or alter any computer source code used for a computer resource with an intention to cause damage;]
2[he shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation to the person so affected.]
Explanation.—For the purposes of this section,—
(i) —computer contaminant‖ means any set of computer instructions that are designed—
(a) to modify, destroy, record, transmit data or programme residing within a computer, computer system or computer network; or
(b) by any means to usurp the normal operation of the computer, computer system, or computer network;
(ii) —computer data-base‖ means a representation of information, knowledge, facts, concepts or instructions in text, image, audio, video that are being prepared or have been prepared in a formalised manner or have been produced by a computer, computer system or computer network and are intended for use in a computer, computer system or computer network;
(iii) —computer virus‖ means any computer instruction, information, data or programme that destroys, damages, degrades or adversely affects the performance of a computer resource or attaches itself to another computer resource and operates when a programme, data or instruction is executed or some other event takes place in that computer resource;
(iv) —damage‖ means to destroy, alter, delete, add, modify or rearrange any computer resource by any means.
1[ (v) —computer source code‖ means the listing of programme, computer commands, design and layout and programme analysis of computer resource in any form.]
