Dr. Nasser Bin Mohammed Al-Bakmi defined the concept
of information crimes as “all acts or abstinence that would
result in an assault on tangible or intangible monetary
value and that are the direct or indirect result of the
intervention of information technology.” He said there are
two opinions regarding the definition of the legal nature
of the information: the first is traditional and says that the
information has a special type of nature, and the second
is modern and says that the information is only a newly
formed group of values. He explained that the traditional
criminal law is not sufficient, in principle, to confront this
new form of crime; and for that reason an intervention
was made by modifying the existing laws, or the issuance
of some legislations that aims at imposing criminal law
protection to the information on the local and international
levels. He added that if one follows what has been achieved
in the Arabic counties in this regard, it is obvious that these
countries have not developed its punishment legislation
to confront the information crimes as has happened in
the advanced countries; however it is serious in protecting
the author’s rights for computer software specifically. The
Gulf countries are more involved in this respect where the
Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates and the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have developed special systems
to confront the information crimes. According to the
speaker, the successful confrontation of the information
crimes requires an increase in cooperation by means of
common systems and treaties on the international level
generally, and on the Gulf and Arab levels in particular.