International Law

Cut-n-Paste and the Law that never was

By admin

Anyone remember the Communications Convergence Bill? I do. As a young associate in a technology law practice I remember spending many nights poring through this and comparative laws around the world analysing it for its potential implications, when or if this bill became law. Over time and perhaps because no one really understood why this bill existed in the first place, “when” gave way to “if” and now I hear that “if” is rather bored and might give up altogether.

How sad. Along with the Information Technology Act, this was supposed to be a revolutionary legislation that would facilitate India’s emergence as a superpower in the global knowledge economy. I guess when Reliance entered the telecom scene and woke up the other players (and then shot itself in the foot and head before changing management) many important people realized that with an on-course projection of 500M subscribers, the Indian apple-cart needeth no upsetting. Hence the slow unkindly death.

So surprise surprise when I reviewed a well-cut Information Memorandum released by the Department of Telecommunications (also known as God in the telecom space) in connection with the upcoming 3G auction. The memo has a semi-detailed review of the existing regulatory regime in India and lists this “bill” as one of the key acts of Parliament that governs this sector.

Dig deeper and you find that this is a direct cut-n-paste from the God website. I can understand some blokes at God getting it wrong but the authors of the memo appear to be lawyers from a well-known law firm - who else would start an introduction to an information memorandum with nearly every word defined? Methinks they were in time trouble and had to resort to this kind of stuff to bloat the memo and justify their billing.

Full post as published by Technology Law India on September 29, 2009 (boomark / email).