Defamation, copyright, and a ban on fines to freelancers — BAJ takes part in discussion of the new Code of Administrative Offences

Defama­tion

The authors of the draft CAO sub­mit­ted for dis­cus­sion pro­pose to exclude lia­bil­i­ty for defama­tion from the CAO (lia­bil­i­ty for defama­tion is also envis­aged by the Crim­i­nal Code).

BAJ believes cas­es on dis­sem­i­na­tion of false infor­ma­tion that dis­cred­its hon­or and dig­ni­ty should belong sole­ly to the civ­il law sphere. Dis­putes relat­ed to pro­tec­tion of per­son­al non-prop­er­ty rights should be con­sid­ered under civ­il law with respect to the prin­ci­ple of equal­i­ty of the par­ties, which is not pos­si­ble in admin­is­tra­tive or crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

Copy­right infringe­ment

New arti­cle 10.15 of the CAO (arti­cle 9.21 in the old ver­sion) envis­ages lia­bil­i­ty for breach of copy­right, relat­ed rights and indus­tri­al prop­er­ty rights. We believe that dis­putes relat­ed to pro­tec­tion of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty should be con­sid­ered in the frame­work of civ­il pro­ceed­ings and only at the request of a per­son who believes that their rights have been vio­lat­ed.

We pro­pose to exclude arti­cle 10.15 from the draft CAO.

Dis­sem­i­na­tion of prod­ucts pro­mot­ing the cult of vio­lence and cru­el­ty

Since the law does not define «the cult of vio­lence and cru­el­ty» and the per­cep­tion of vio­lence and cru­el­ty is sub­jec­tive, the estab­lish­ment of admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­li­ty by arti­cle 18.8 for dis­sem­i­na­tion of prod­ucts pro­mot­ing the cult of vio­lence and cru­el­ty cre­ates the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ambi­gu­i­ty and incon­sis­tent appli­ca­tion of this pro­vi­sion.

In addi­tion, this pro­vi­sion is an exces­sive restric­tion on free­dom of expres­sion due to the fact that it is no longer rel­e­vant. In par­tic­u­lar, from July 1, 2017, infor­ma­tion prod­ucts must be marked with an age label before being dis­sem­i­nat­ed in the media or sold, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to lim­it the impact of prod­ucts con­tain­ing scenes of vio­lence on the health and per­cep­tion of minors.

There­fore, we pro­pose to exclude arti­cle 18.8 from the draft CAO.

Insult

Arti­cle 10.2 «Insult» of the draft CAO, unlike the cur­rent arti­cle 9.3, is sup­ple­ment­ed by part 2, that actu­al­ly coin­cides with the cur­rent part 1 of arti­cle 198 of the Crim­i­nal Code («Insult»).

Adding this offense to the CAO makes sense only if the offence with the same ele­ments is exclud­ed from the Crim­i­nal Code. Oth­er­wise, the pro­vi­sion that is includ­ed in the COA and pre­served in the Crim­i­nal Code will have no cri­te­ria for dis­tin­guish­ing crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty for insult. BAJ sup­ports decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of insults, as well as oth­er types of defama­tion.

We are in favor of keep­ing a fine of 20 base val­ues as the upper lim­it of pun­ish­ment under part 1 of this arti­cle. The pro­posed increase to 30 base val­ues con­tra­dicts the gen­er­al trend to reduce the upper lim­it of fines.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, with the inclu­sion of «Insults» in the COA, we pro­pose to exclude arti­cle 198 «Insult» from the Crim­i­nal Code. We also pro­pose to remove an admin­is­tra­tive arrest from the list of pos­si­ble penal­ties under this arti­cle.

Pro­pa­gan­da or pub­lic dis­play, pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion of Nazi sym­bols or para­pher­na­lia

The pro­posed ver­sion of arti­cle 18.10 (17.10) pro­vides for admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty for any dis­play of Nazi sym­bols, except in cer­tain cas­es envis­aged in the foot­note to this arti­cle.

How­ev­er, an uncon­di­tion­al ban on pub­lic dis­play, pro­duc­tion, or dis­tri­b­u­tion of Nazi sym­bols or para­pher­na­lia is an unlaw­ful restric­tion on free­dom of expres­sion and may lead to unjus­ti­fied bar­ri­ers to free and open dis­cus­sion in soci­ety, includ­ing for the pur­pos­es of form­ing a neg­a­tive atti­tude to the ide­ol­o­gy of Nazism.

The draft main­tains legal uncer­tain­ty due to the lack of def­i­n­i­tion of the term «pro­pa­gan­da» in the Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tion that may lead to unjus­ti­fied pros­e­cu­tion in cas­es where no harm is caused to legal­ly pro­tect­ed inter­ests.

We sug­gest omit­ting arti­cle 18.10 of the COA or stat­ing it in the fol­low­ing word­ing: «Arti­cle 18.10. Pub­lic dis­play, pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion of Nazi sym­bols or para­pher­na­lia. Pub­lic dis­play, includ­ing through the glob­al com­put­er net­work Inter­net or oth­er infor­ma­tion net­work, pro­duc­tion, or dis­tri­b­u­tion of Nazi sym­bols or para­pher­na­lia, as well as stor­age or acqui­si­tion of such sym­bols or para­pher­na­lia for dis­tri­b­u­tion, with the goal to pro­mote the ide­ol­o­gy of Nazism.»   

In addi­tion, the note to this arti­cle lists con­di­tions when these acts do not con­sti­tute an admin­is­tra­tive offense. We sug­gest adding «dis­play that forms a neg­a­tive atti­tude to the ide­ol­o­gy of Nazism» to this list.

Infor­ma­tion prod­ucts with calls for extrem­ism

Part 1 of arti­cle 18.11 of the CAO estab­lish­es lia­bil­i­ty for dis­tri­b­u­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, [and/or] trans­porta­tion of «infor­ma­tion prod­ucts con­tain­ing calls for extrem­ist activ­i­ties or prop­a­gat­ing such activ­i­ties.»

How­ev­er, part 2 of arti­cle 18.11 of the COA estab­lish­es lia­bil­i­ty for dis­tri­b­u­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, [and/or] trans­porta­tion of «infor­ma­tion prod­ucts includ­ed in the Nation­al list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als».

This implies that the estab­lish­ment of lia­bil­i­ty for such offens­es con­tra­dicts the pro­vi­sions of the Law «On Coun­ter­ing Extrem­ism.» This vio­lates one of the main prin­ci­ples of reg­u­la­to­ry activ­i­ty – con­sis­ten­cy and com­pre­hen­sive­ness of legal reg­u­la­tion of pub­lic rela­tions.

To avoid exces­sive restric­tions on free­dom of expres­sion, we sug­gest omit­ting part 1.18.11 of the CAO.

Vio­la­tion of the law on mass media (arti­cle 23.5 (22.9))

Fines to free­lancers

Part 3 of the new word­ing of the arti­cle pro­vides for lia­bil­i­ty for ille­gal pro­duc­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts. At the same time, it does not define what exact­ly is meant by ille­gal pro­duc­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts and does not spec­i­fy the liable par­ties.

Accord­ing to the com­mon prac­tice, this reg­u­la­to­ry pro­vi­sion is used to pros­e­cute Belaru­sian cit­i­zens (free­lance jour­nal­ists) for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion from the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs. 

In 2018 and 2019 alone, free­lance jour­nal­ists were pros­e­cut­ed under this arti­cle at least 162 times. In the first 4 months of 2020, the courts imposed anoth­er 10 fines under this arti­cle. The pros­e­cu­tion of any­one for the fact that their works appear in for­eign media gross­ly vio­lates the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus and its inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions in this sphere.

We pro­pose chang­ing part 3 of arti­cle 23.5. of COA, so that only a legal enti­ty des­ig­nat­ed as media edi­to­r­i­al office can be held liable for this offense.

Dis­sem­i­na­tion of pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion

In 2018, arti­cle 22.9 of the COA includ­ed new parts 3¹ and 3², estab­lish­ing lia­bil­i­ty of media and own­ers of the Inter­net resources that are not reg­is­tered as online pub­li­ca­tions for dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion that is pro­hib­it­ed for dis­sem­i­na­tion in media and on Inter­net, unless lia­bil­i­ty for dis­sem­i­na­tion of such infor­ma­tion is envis­aged by oth­er arti­cles of the Spe­cial Part of the CAO. The draft CAO pre­serves these reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments (parts 4 and 5 of arti­cle 23.5).

We believe estab­lish­ing lia­bil­i­ty with­out exact def­i­n­i­tion of «pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion» or approach­es to such def­i­n­i­tion fails to com­ply with both the stan­dards of inter­na­tion­al law that guar­an­tee free­dom of expres­sion and the nation­al law­mak­ing pro­ce­dure.  Accord­ing to arti­cle 23 of the Law of the Repub­lic of Belarus «On Nor­ma­tive Legal Acts», «terms and con­cepts used in the text of a nor­ma­tive legal act must be clear and unam­bigu­ous. When pre­sent­ing the legal norms of a nor­ma­tive legal act, it is nec­es­sary to avoid […] over­ly gen­er­al­ized […] word­ings, as well as over­lap­ing of nor­ma­tive pre­scrip­tions and their mul­ti­plic­i­ty on the same issue.»

We pro­pose to exclude parts 4 and 5 of arti­cle 23.5 of the CAO. If they are kept in this arti­cle, we pro­pose to amend it, so as to spec­i­fy dis­sem­i­na­tion of exact­ly what kind of infor­ma­tion entails admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty.

Dis­sem­i­na­tion by mass media of false infor­ma­tion that dis­cred­its the hon­or and dig­ni­ty of the Pres­i­dent (arti­cle 24.21)

BAJ wel­comes the reduc­tion of the upper lim­it of pun­ish­ment. How­ev­er, in our opin­ion, the max­i­mum fines for indi­vid­ual entre­pre­neurs and legal enti­ties remain exces­sive­ly high.

Please note that the Crim­i­nal code (arti­cle 367) also pro­vides for lia­bil­i­ty for mass media for dis­sem­i­na­tion of false infor­ma­tion that dis­cred­its the hon­or and dig­ni­ty of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus (defama­tion) (arti­cle 367).

We pro­pose:

●        to decrim­i­nal­ize this offense by syn­chro­niz­ing the change in the CAO with removal of arti­cle 367 (as well as arti­cle 368 «Insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus») from the Crim­i­nal code;

●        to reduce the max­i­mum fines for indi­vid­ual entre­pre­neurs and legal enti­ties under arti­cle 24.21 «Dis­sem­i­na­tion by the mass media of delib­er­ate­ly false infor­ma­tion dis­cred­it­ing the hon­or and dig­ni­ty of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus» to 50 and 200 base val­ues, respec­tive­ly.

Also, BAJ addressed the Nation­al Cen­ter for Leg­is­la­tion and Legal Research with impor­tant pro­pos­als on amend­ments to the Pro­ce­dur­al and Exec­u­tive Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences.  The full texts of the sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments can be found here (in Russ­ian):

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