Criminal Liability on Social Media Limits of Freedom of Expression on social media
In the light of serving the community and enhancing the awareness of the citizens’ rights and duties, the faculty of law of the British University in Egypt held on Sunday 19th of February 2017 its forth legal culture seminar discussing the “Criminal Liability on Social Media”.
Dr. Gamil abdel Baki, Professor of Criminal Law in Faculty of Law, Ain Shams University and its former dean, was the guest speaker on the session and he has raised important points regarding this matter. Professor Hassan Abdel Hamid, dean of the faculty of law has started the seminar introducing to the topic of the session and to Dr. Gamil the guest speaker. Beside the Dean of the faculty of law, the academic staff attended as well as students of the faculty and few students from other faculties.
Professor Gamil pointed out to the importance of defining and differentiating between the core terms related to that topic such as internet, intranet and other services such as Minitel and vital conversations. He has also stated the importance of being able to recognize the private nature of some internet services such as the E-mail and the public nature of some social media platforms such as HiFive and Yahoo.
The guest speaker highlighted the effect of such services on our lives to the extent that some crimes could be committed over these platforms or services which poses the question of which state is to be responsible of punishing the liable person if the crime happened in a country however its consequences occurred in another place. Professor Gamil clarified that the internet does not fall under jurisdiction of a certain state nor a specific law. Accordingly, the international community must come to agreements on how to settle such cases. Professor Gamil stated that certain principles govern such crimes and determine the jurisdiction of a certain state over the crime such as the principle of territoriality, principle of personality (where the criminal holds the nationality of such state).
He has also mentioned some very famous cases where crimes was held in a country and another country had jurisdiction over it such as the case of Suzan Tamim who was killed by Mustafa Al Sukary in Dubai but he was sentenced in Egypt. The professor also stated that it is the nature of the act itself that could be criminalized in one place and not considered as a criminal act in another. The question here was what if the crime happened over the internet where each party is in a state that treats the act differently. An active example for that type of acts is the polygamy and whether or not for instance a person in France where the polygamy is prohibited married a woman in Egypt where the act is not criminalized. Could the person be held liable? The professor also tackled the possibility of tracking committer of internet crimes by tracking the IP address or the serial number of the devise he’s using to commit the crime.
At the end of the seminar, students had some questions for the guest speaker who was very informative answering them. In closure, Professor Hassan Abdel Hamid thanked Dr. Gamil for his informative and enlighten session.
