Administrative liability as a means of countering the spread of illegal content on the Internet

The relevance of writing this article is justified by the growing possibilities of providing negative information and psychological effects on the individual psyche and public consciousness of Internet users. This fact has a negative impact on the state of security in various areas of public administration. The author of this article considers administrative liability as a means of countering the spread of illegal content on the Internet. The subject of the published research consists of: the norms of administrative and tort legislation establishing administrative responsibility for the dissemination of illegal content; administrative and judicial practice developing in this area of public relations; scientific literature devoted to the study of signs of administrative offenses, administrative responsibility and ensuring information and psychological safety of the population from threats arising in the Internet environment. The purpose of this work is to characterize the main signs of administrative offenses related to the dissemination of illegal content, as well as legislation on administrative offenses in terms of bringing persons distributing illegal content to administrative responsibility.  The methodological basis of the research consists of general scientific methods of cognition (analysis, synthesis, etc.), as well as systemic, structural-functional and formal-legal methods. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the formation of a list of administrative offenses related to the dissemination of illegal content. Also, within the framework of this work, a characteristic of the main signs of administrative offenses is presented, on the basis of which it is possible to limit the dissemination of information in the network space. It has been established that the studied group of acts has a sign of social danger. Criteria for measuring the degree of public danger of offenses related to the distribution of illegal content are formulated. Justified and empirically confirmed (based on the results of a sociological survey of 100 employees of the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation) the need to adjust the legislation on administrative responsibility, namely, the addition of Article 4.3 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation with the following sign aggravating administrative responsibility: "the commission of an administrative offense in information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet or using these technologies".

administrative responsibility, illegal content, distribution of illegal content, administrative offenses, differentiation of administrative punishment, information security, public danger, the Internet environment, destructive content, informational and psychological threats