O limite do direito penal no mundo digital à luz das fake news e da liberdade de expressão

Abstract

This paper focuses its study on the legitimacy of the criminalization of the dissemination of false news. In order to do so, it goes through the conceptualization of what would be legal goods, from the point of view of several jurists, demonstrating the influence of the historical context on Criminal Law, as a condition of the own concept of crime and legal good and describing the guiding principles of this delimitation. It then defines within the digital space the current phenomenon known as Fake News as a harmful practice of disseminating untruthful information and capable of influencing society whose freedom of information is so defended. Then, the duality between freedom of expression and information and the collective prejudice arising from the propagation of these news is established. Following this, the social outcry for its criminalization is exposed, inquiring about the legitimacy and real necessity of this criminalization, since the Principle of the Minimum Intervention of Criminal Law is in force in the legal order of the country, based on the presentation of favorable and contrary arguments to those rules. In the end, it is clear that the core of the issue is not the more intense presence of criminal law, with the creation of new types, but rather the effectiveness in protecting existing legal goods. In the elaboration of this study, the explanatory method of approach is used along with the bibliographic study procedure.