Regulating India's Digital Public Cultures: A Grey or Differently Regulated Area

摘要

The paper draws on ethnographic studies of urban, peri-urban cyber cafes in Western India, to understand public norms governing digital security and privacy in a context brimming with inconsistent and arbitrary state telecom regulation and a widespread culture of software piracy. We focus on issues emerging from three interrelated contexts crucial to cyber regulation in India: the grass-root, the state and the non-formal economy. While cafe managers dismiss their responsibility to police on-line security, state level initiatives show contradictions in their stated enthusiasm for an IT enabled society and sporadic regulatory behaviour directing public usage of the internet. There is a lack of will and genuine bemusement in the state apparatus to handle cyber regulation in non-formal and para- legal economies.