CHAPTER IX
PENALTIES [, COMPENSATION] AND ADJUDICATION
Penalty [and compensation] for damage to computer, computer system, etc.
43. 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 database 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 database 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, know-ledge, 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.] |