How to understand ＂rumor＂ in rumor crime

Although rumors can be analyzed and understood from the etymological meaning and sociological meaning of Chinese, rumors and false information can be regarded as synonymous under legal semantics.

□ The terminology of legislation and judicial documents should be standardized, and "rumours", "false information", "false facts" and "fabricated facts" should be uniformly expressed as "false information" as far as possible. In judicial practice, fabricating (manufacturing) false information and spreading false information can be referred to as "spreading rumors" for short.

At present, there are many crimes involving rumors in China’s criminal law. Among them, the crimes of directly using the concept of "rumors" include the crime of inciting subversion of state power, the crime of disturbing the morale of the military in wartime, and the crime of spreading rumors to confuse people in wartime; The crimes of using the concept of "false information" include the crime of fabricating and deliberately spreading false information, the crime of fabricating and deliberately spreading false terrorist information, the crime of fabricating and spreading false information in securities and futures trading, and the crime of network rumors to stir up trouble; The crime of damaging business reputation and commodity reputation uses the expression of "fabricating and spreading false facts" In addition, it also stipulates that the act of "fabricating facts to slander others" may constitute libel. As for the crime of false accusation and frame-up stipulated in Article 243 of the Criminal Law, although it also has the characteristics of "fabricating facts", its behavioral characteristics are not distributed to the society, but reported to specific state organs, which is not a rumor crime. If the perpetrator spreads the fabricated criminal facts to the society and constitutes a crime, it will be treated as libel. Article 25 of the Public Security Administration Punishment Law stipulates the administrative punishment of "spreading rumors". Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases of Defamation by Information Network issued by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on September 6, 2013.(hereinafter referred to as "Internet Defamation Interpretation")Article 5 stipulates that "whoever fabricates false information, or knowingly fabricates false information and spreads it on the information network, or organizes or instructs personnel to spread it on the information network, thus causing serious chaos in public order" shall be punished as the crime of stirring up trouble.

However, whether rumors, false information, false facts and fabricated facts in the above specifications are all equal to rumors, whether rumors can be defined as false information and how to identify them are controversial. Modern Chinese Dictionary interprets rumors as news without factual basis. Cihai interprets rumors as unfounded rumors or fabricated news. The academic understanding of rumors is basically based on these two explanations, and a lot of consensus has been formed, emphasizing that rumors are a description of objective facts, not just subjective comments; False information should be related to real life, not myths, superstitions and literary works. However, scholars have different opinions on whether rumors are false information. At present, there are three main viewpoints in academic circles:

The first view is that rumors must be false information, but the scope of rumors is smaller than false information. Some scholars believe that unfounded news is often inconsistent with reality, so rumors must belong to false information; However, news that is inconsistent with reality is not necessarily unfounded, so false information does not necessarily belong to rumors, and the scope of rumors is smaller than false information. Analyzing this view, we can find that there are two essential views: one is to subjectively and intentionally spread rumors as the fundamental condition; Second, it is believed that information spread on the basis of certain real information is not a rumor, so the scope of rumors is smaller than false information. The first view is of course correct. There are no rumors spread subjectively and intentionally. Of course, it is also a rumor in the sociological sense, but it is not a rumor in criminal law. However, it is debatable that some false rumors are not rumors.

The second view is that rumors are not necessarily false information, and that rumors can be false. Some scholars believe that "unfounded news is not necessarily news that does not conform to the facts." Another scholar believes that "falsehood is not the definition standard of rumors, rumors can be false, and its fundamental feature is the unknowability that is different from accuracy". Some scholars believe that the rumor itself may be true, but not necessarily false. Some scholars believe that "the falsity of information is not the fundamental feature of rumors", and the essence of rumors should be "unconfirmed and specious". This view artificially expands the explanation of rumors, and defines rumors as neutral words, which are equivalent to rumors. Its essence is to artificially extract the elements of deliberate fabrication and malicious dissemination of unconfirmed news from rumors, which is stealing the established concept of rumors.

The third view is that rumors and false information are synonyms. Some scholars believe that "both unfounded and fabricated point to the falsity of information" and that "rumors are not necessarily unfounded for false arguments". Some scholars also agree that rumors in Chinese refer to false information; For unconfirmed information, people are used to calling it "rumor" and "rumor".

Most scholars agree with the third view, that is, rumors can be analyzed and understood from the etymological meaning and sociological meaning of Chinese, but under the legal semantics, rumors and false information can be regarded as synonymous. Some scholars advocate that the position should be interpreted based on restrictive theory. Under the semantics of criminal law, rumors and false information can be regarded as synonymous. Some supporters believe that false information in judicial interpretation should be defined as "unfounded" and "inconsistent with the facts". Some scholars believe that under the semantics of criminal law, network rumors refer to false information on the internet, but the concept of rumors itself is ambiguous in etymology. It is suggested that the same meaning should not be expressed in different words in legislation, and the concept of network rumors should be replaced by false information on the internet. It can be seen that although scholars have different concepts in interpreting rumors from Chinese semantics, most of them regard rumors and false information as synonyms from legal semantics.

This paper also agrees with the third view for the following reasons:

First, rumors in modern Chinese semantics have negative meanings and derogatory meanings, and are generally not neutral words that can be equated with "rumors". "Making rumors" is always associated with "making trouble" and "gossiping about right and wrong". Defining rumors as false information conforms to the language habits of modern Chinese and is easy for people to understand.

Second, in law, rumors, unfounded facts and false information are the same thing. Because this is not a philosophical problem, but a realistic legal fact problem. The criterion for identifying legal facts here is whether there is a verifiable basis in reality, rather than whether it is a fact in the long run or from philosophical truth, which is consistent with the purpose of maintaining social order in criminal law. Fabricating and disseminating unconfirmed information also has serious social harm, and it is in line with the legislative purpose to identify it as false information. It is not feasible in law to take the philosophical truth standard as the standard for determining legal facts.

Thirdly, from the description of the criminal law and the public security administration punishment law in China, rumors and false information are also the same concept, and they have the same meaning. As mentioned earlier, the crimes of using the concept of "rumor" include the crime of inciting subversion of state power, the crime of disturbing the morale of the army by spreading rumors in wartime, and the crime of spreading rumors to confuse people in wartime. The crimes of using the concept of "false information" include the crime of fabricating and deliberately spreading false information, the crime of fabricating and deliberately spreading false terrorist information, the crime of fabricating and spreading false information in securities and futures trading, and the crime of network rumors to stir up trouble. The term "fabricating and spreading false facts" is used in the crime of damaging business reputation and commodity reputation. In addition, the crime of libel also stipulates that its behavioral characteristics are "fabricating facts to slander others". In traditional military crimes, the word "spreading rumors" is used in legislation to describe the charges. The author believes that the reason is that there was no such thing as false information in our society at the time of legislation. At the same time, for the sake of simplicity of charges, legislators directly used common sayings in life as charges, and the meaning of the word "rumor" still means "fabricating and deliberately spreading false information".

Fourth, rumors containing some false facts should also belong to rumors. Article 1 of the Interpretation of Internet Defamation defines rumors as fabricating facts or "tampering with the original information content related to others on the information network as facts that damage others’ reputation", which actually refers to some false facts.

It should be noted that it is not scientific to judge false information by the proportion of the information contained in the event or whether it is confirmed. For a major event, even if it contains 1% false components, it may seriously harm the society, because this 1% false component may be the key fact or the fact that people are most concerned about in communication, so as long as it is false information, no matter how much the false component accounts for in the whole event, its own falsehood is 100%. At the same time, it is not practical to judge whether it is a rumor according to the proportion of false components.

To sum up, we should standardize the language of legislative and judicial documents, and express "rumors", "false information", "false facts" and "fabricated facts" as unified as possible as "false information", which can be fabricated in judicial practice.(manufacturing)False information and spreading false information are referred to as "spreading rumors" and "spreading rumors" for short.

(The authors are professors and doctoral students of Southwest University of Political Science and Law)