Basics and criteria governing the criminalization of emerging crimes in social networks

Today, social networks have become means of communication and interaction of human societies, and their number and members are increasing every day. However, these facilities have made today's human more capable than the past. With the increasing progress of science and technology, different societies in the transition from a traditional society to an advanced society, in addition to maintaining many social harms that already existed, face new crimes that are not given to them due to their lack of history and background in human societies. They say emerging social harms. Emerging crimes are crimes related to the new technology of social networks, which are caused by the use of these networks, including Instagram, Telegram, which can be mentioned as phishing, farming, internet gambling, and internet fraud. The newness of these crimes implies that some of these crimes have not been criminalized in Iran's legislation. The main purpose of this research is to discuss the criteria and the basis of criminalization of emerging crimes in social networks, which has reached these achievements with the descriptive-analytical research method, that the possibility of criminalizing emerging crimes has two views. The first point of view is based on the opposition of the criminalization of these crimes based on the individual's absolute discretion in using social networks, which is not acceptable with the needs of today's society. However, the second point of view has been criminalized, new crimes of social networks according to principles such as the principle of harmlessness, expediency, etc., and the second point of view is acceptable considering the consequences of these crimes.