India has no current or expected spam regulations, and ISPs are neither filtering incoming mail nor securing vulnerable relays. Despite all of this, spam seems to be a fairly minor problem in India, fought privately without government resources. A quick comparison to the UK suggests that maybe spam legislation would only make things worse.
India’s first and only formal attempt at regulating Internet activity was the Information Technology Act of 2000, which criminalizes hacking and other serious cybercrimes. The act does regulate obscenity, which could be used against spammers sending pornographic spam. The IT Act is unclear about ISP liability, so it might even hold ISPs liable for routing pornographic spam. Other kinds of spam have no legal prohibition. Though some think it might be possible in theory to creatively use British common law to argue spam is a nuisance or trespass, the likelihood of a court agreeing is slim. Somehow, an Indian court fighting spam by appealing to ancient British maxims about tracts of land, sic utere tuo spamo ut alienam non laedas, seems improbable.
Ironically, the UK legislation against spam in December 2003 is argued to have legitimized spam in the UK to push it into the #10 spot over unregulated India. India is currently an unranked spammer, and there seem to be few problems with international blocking of Indian ISPs. However, there are concerns that Indian ISPs are
vulnerable to being used as spam relays by using outdated sendmail versions. Many Indian ISPs also fail to filter incoming mail. It is possible that filtering at a server level might have helped slow the rapid spread of the Sobig worm in India.
Today, the Internet is wild and free in India, with the exception of an alleged government request in September 2003 for ISPs to
block a Yahoo group critical of the Indian goverment. Chain e-mail and SMS chain mail are increasing. Some claim the Indian government does not even have the resources to fight serious computer crime and believe that spam actions must be taken independently by ISPs and users. Even if India were to introduce legislation, it is unclear how effective (if at all) it would be given India’s low level of spam and low investment in cybercrime.
For other countries, see the Spam Laws Worldwide Index.