Section 43 in The Information Technology Act, 2000
43. Penalty and compensation for damage to computer, computer system, etc . -
If any person without permission of the owner or any other person who is incharge of a computer, computer system or computer network,-(a)accesses or secures access to such computer, computer system or computer network 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,(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, conceals, 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;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 database" 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;(v)"computer source code" means the listing of programmes, computer commands, design and layout and programme analysis of computer resource in any form.
