| Summary: | The rapid advancement of information technology and the ubiquity of the Internet have created massive opportunities and benefits for all in every spheres oflife. Unfortunately, these technological advancements have been exploited by unscrupulous individuals to commit crimes in the cyber space. Consequently, many countries have updated their legal framework so as to tackle the raising incidents of cybercrimes. Nonetheless, Yemen has no specific laws on cybercrimes, and this is further exacerbated with Article 47 of the Constitution of Yemen 1991 and section 2 of the Penal Code 1994 which provide that no crime or punishment shall be undertaken without law. The absence of specific law in Yemen in dealing with cybercrimes has posed great challenges to legal authorities, particularly in relation to the criminalisation of such crimes, investigation processes, and gathering digital evidence. The qualitative method was adopted in this research to achieve its objectives through the employment of doctrinal legal research methodology. This was done by a descriptive, analytical and critical analysis of existing legal texts affecting cybercrimes in Yemen including statutes, journal articles, books, cases and other literature such as conference proceedings and newspapers. The analysis shows that there is inadequacy in the existing laws governing cybercrimes in Yemen. This can be seen in the commission of conventional offences such as criminal defamation which may arise in the online world and is currently criminalised under the
Yemeni Penal Code 1994. However, there are other acts that can be committed only in the cyberspace such as unauthorised access to computers and unauthorised modifications of computer materials and many others are not specifically dealt with by the Yemeni Penal Code 1994. Furthermore, although there are marked differences between cybercrimes and conventional crimes, there are no specific provisions in the Yemeni legal framework regulating the cybercrime investigation process and gathering of evidence. Malaysia has, on the contrary, made an important leap forward in regulating cybercrimes by enacting specific laws including the Computer Crimes Act 1997 and the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998. The study concluded that the existing criminal laws could not combat cybercrimes in Yemen adequately. Therefore, there is a critical need and indeed timely to formulate new specific laws and to update
the existing Yemeni criminal laws in order to tackle various legal issues surrounding cybercrimes. A special reference has been made to the legal position in Malaysia as a number of specific laws have been enacted to regulate these forms of cybercrimes. Apart from that, several amendments have also been made to the existing statutes, in particular the Evidence Act 1950, so as to render the relevant procedures and processes are in line with the nature and attributes of cybercrimes. In short, it is submitted that the legal development in regulating cybercrimes in Malaysia is very commendable and could be seen as a viable model to be adopted by the legislatures in Yemen.
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