LEGAL LIABILITY FOR «DISTRIBUTION OF FAKES»: LEGAL, SUBSTANTIVE AND OTHER ASSESSMENT

УДК 347.51 ББК 67.072

Abstract

The article analyzes and evaluates the norms on legal liability (primarily criminal) for the disseminationof knowingly false information under the guise of reliable information, often referred to as liability for“dissemination of fakes”, for “fake crimes”, which, in turn, is sometimes understood as liability for actions todiscredit the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. According to the author, despite the fact that in recent years the word “fake” has entered the practice of the Russian language, the integration of this conceptinto the legal sphere can have destructive consequences for the legal system. The expressions “disseminationof fakes”, “fake crimes”, as well as the word “fake” itself (newspeak), are nothing more than jargon that wasuncritically accepted by the domestic legal community, and therefore should be excluded from official businessand scientific discourse, given the possibility of replacing them with Russian-language analogues. Havingexamined the elements of crimes for the so-called “dissemination of fakes”, the author comes to the conclusionthat they are insufficiently defined in terms of the object of the attack, the causal relationship between thisaction and harm to public safety, they are deficient in terms of establishing, as a rule, a general, rather than aspecial subject of responsibility, and the responsibility provided for them is disproportionate.