Цифровой объект преступления

Abstract

The study aims to analyze the transitional provisions of the digital era and their adaptation to the existing criminal law realities, to determine the signs of a digital object of crime and the main question of whether such digital objects are protected by the criminal law of the country. The transition of economic relations to electronic services and social networks was the reason for the transformation of crime from real to virtual and led to the emergence of the term “digital crimes” in the science of criminal law, which requires a conceptual justification of the concept of a digital object of crime, to which the author, in a highly specialized sense, refers social relations that develop upon the turnover of digital financial assets, virtual assets and cryptocurrencies. After digital technologies have turned into general-purpose technologies affecting all sectors of the economy and society, the usual criminal-legal approach to determining the object of encroachment has become unnecessarily blunt, since the criminal law contains a sufficiently large number of elements of crimes referring to various kinds of normative legal acts regulating virtual legal relations. At the same time, such legislation is vague and does not solve law enforcement issues. During the preparation of the article, formal-logical methods were mainly used for the analysis of socio-legal phenomena. The author draws attention to the fact that social realities require the defining of the boundaries of secure communication in the digital and information spheres, the subject and mechanisms of its legal support and protection. At the same time, the definition of the digital object of crime is justified in the context of classical theories of the object of crime, innovative trends, and actualization of the doctrine of criminal law. Based on the conducted research, the author comes to the conclusion that the axiology of the digital object of crime caused by public attitude to it obliges the state to consolidate it as a social value and put it among those protected by criminal law, including them in the list of objects of civil rights. The digital object of crime is socially significant values and benefits of subjects of virtual property relations that develop in the sphere of turnover of digital financial assets, virtual currency and cryptocurrencies, subject to criminal protection, which the guilty person encroaches on, wishing to cause damage to their owner. The concept of the digital object of crime proposed by the author in this regard is a timely and relevant solution to a number of problems of the qualification of digital crimes.