Vladimir Elin – Associate Professor, Department of Information Security Management, Faculty of Business Informatics, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Address: 20, Myasnitskaya str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation.
E-mail: velin@hse.ru

Due to the integration processes in the fight against cybercrime, at the end of 2012 the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation included Art. 159-6, providing criminal penalties for fraud in the sphere of computer information. The disposition of this article is directly related to the relevant regulations of the European Convention on Cybercrime, ETS № 185. Thus, there is a situation when our country, not formally participating in the Convention, actually develops its own legislation in the vector defined by the existing international practice. At this, we should take into account the peculiarities of legal regulation of information processes in our country in general and the specifics of data circulation, in particular that of the lack of the Law on electronic document, non-acceptance of information as an object of civil legal problems of proof material consequences of the act. Legal regulation of information processes in the Russian society is implementing standards for Information Law, which is a completely new sphere lacking sufficiently developed legal support.

The article describes the characteristics of the offense stipulated by Art. 159-6 of the Russian Criminal Code, the specifics of the computer information as a tool and means of committing crimes in the property sector, socially dangerous consequences of computer fraud. The assignment of the object of the offense to the property will inevitably give rise to the problems in practical application of Art. 159-6 of the Criminal Code to the issues related to the information holder, the amount of damage, property characteristics of data, cause-and-effect relationships between lawful acts and harmful effects, etc. Given the characteristics of the information relations in the field of storage, processing or transmission of computer information, the paper offers recommendations to improve the disposition of the Article.