An Analysis Of Qin Huohuo’s Online Rumor-spreading Case

Fabricating and spreading rumors possess the features of fast spreading speed, broad influence and great harm to the society.The Supreme People’s court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the PRC unveiled the explanation of some issues related to laws applicable to crimes such as blackmailing via Internet on September5th,2013.The tring and pronoucing of Qin Huohuo (whose real name is Qin Zhihui), in the April of2013, who was accused of slander and affray, was the first typical one hearing public based on this legal explanation since it came out.There was continuous controversies in academia, which mainly focused on several problems, including whether the Internet is a public place, whether the online defamation is applicable to public prosecution, how to deal with the Internet defamation offense, defiance and affray crime.From the interpretation standpoint of objectivism, the public place in the jurisprudence possess the features of openness, publicness and people gathering. The internet space also possesses these features, and is the sharing space of people in information era, thus essentially it belongs to the public place in jurisprudence, witch means disturbing the order of internet space also belongs to disturbing the order of public space.Therefore, in the period of serious emergency, fabricating and spreading fake information, which lead to bad influence on state organs, Creating disturbances and causing serious public disorder comferms to the constitutive requirement of the crime of affray.Fabricating and spreading stories online or spreading stories which are known well as fabricated, and leading to negative effects on others, do accord with the defamation which regulated by the criminal law. Defamating others, which endanger the sociaty order and national interest seriously, apply to Prosecution procedure.The self-defamation not only dispraise one’s own personal dignity and reputation, but also disturb the order of internet space, and if it lead to serious disorder of public order, the one should also be pulished as the crime of affray.As to combination of the crime of online defamation and the crime of online affray, it should be managed, on the basis of the basic fact, as the rule of choosing the more serious one. The water-army and company staff, who are joint crime, should also be responsible for the accomplice...