After completing seven law related books, including a series of five legal literacy books (three published, two to be released soon) for my publisher, a journalist friend asked me, ‘What’s next?’

‘Don’t really know,’ I replied.  ‘Probably I’ll just give it a break for some time.  Maybe try my hand at writing a novel instead.  I have a couple of interesting plots in my mind.’

‘Oh, you mean that literary masterpiece which is going to get you the Booker prize,’ he said mockingly.  ‘Let that brew for some more time.  I have an idea for you.  You know there is this new Bill, the Information Technology one, which has been covered widely in the media and is due to be passed by Parliament in the winter session.  Since the Internet and e-commerce are very much the buzz word now, why don’t you round off the millennium - the real one - by doing a book on the new law explaining its provisions in simple, non-legal language to people like me?

‘Why would you want to read such a book?’ I said.  ‘You planning on quitting the paper.’

‘Yeah, maybe I could set up my own small newspaper on the Web - there are plenty of those coming up, aren’t they?’ he rejoined in good humour.  ‘No, seriously, I think everyone will sooner or later want to read such a book because in time to come the Net is going to affect all our lives.  There are already a million Netizens in the country and their number is growing with the passage of every day.  While it may take some time in India for the impact to be fully felt at least at the village level, already in most metro’s in the country you can find the number of cyber cafes growing by leaps and bounds.’

The terminology wasn’t very apt, but I let it pass.

‘You might think that this is a book which only the elite may use or read,’ he continued, reading my thoughts, ‘but you would be wrong there.  That’s the great thing about the Internet. While it’s true that very many e-businesses have folded up, even then if you have a great idea, you could make millions. You need not have a great deal of capital to begin with.’

‘But I know very little about computers,’ I protested, quite truthfully.  All I knew was   how to word process manuscripts like this one), check for e-mail every few days, and explore the Net once a week on a Sunday, stuff which any high school kid can pick up in two weeks (or even less, considering that they are turning out to be much more at ease in a computer enviroment, than people of my generation generally are).       

‘That’s not important,’ he contradicted.  ‘So long as you know how a computer works, it should do.’

I pondered over his remark for a couple of weeks and come to the conclusion that he was right.  Just as you didn’t need to be a seaman to understand the law of the sea, or a vehicle owner to understand the law relating to traffic offences, you didn’t have to be a whiz at computers in order to understand cyberspace law.  You did however need to have a basic idea, as my friend had pointed out, of how computers worked.

As I commenced my reading, I realized that cyberspace and the law had already become too vast an area.  One could do so many diverse things on the Net now from cyberchatting, to conducting commercial transactions, to having cybersex.  It made sense to write a book focussing mainly on e-commerce transactions, specially since laws pertaining to e-commerce were due to be passed shortly.