Legal certainty issues of the “public demonstration” and “use of the internet” qualifiers in illegal harvesting and trafficking of especially valuable wildlife and plant objects and their derivatives

Subject of research: criminal-law qualifiers “public demonstration… in information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet)” and “commission using the Internet” in cases of illegal harvesting and trafficking of especially valuable wildlife and plant objects and their derivatives.

Purpose of research: to determine the content and correlation of the features "public demonstration... in information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet)" and "commission using the Internet," to identify consistent judicial criteria for their establishment and typical grounds for reclassification.

Research methods: doctrinal (black-letter) and system-structural analysis; comparative legal method; interpretation of statutes and case-law reasoning; case study with content analysis of judgments (online inspections, platform responses, expert reports).

Objects of research: Russian court judgments in cases concerning illegal harvesting and trafficking of derivatives of especially valuable wildlife and plant objects (including online postings and digital content), together with related procedural materials (protocols of online inspections, platform data, expert opinions).

Research findings:

1. Courts consistently distinguish between the use of the Internet as an instrumental mode of committing the deal and public demonstration as a content-based display of the object/process/result accessible to an indefinite circle of persons.

2. A three-part test has emerged for public demonstration: openness of access to the publication, identifiability of the object via authentic images of the actual item, and a behavioral linkage “online content → in-person display → (attempted) sale.”

3. Typical grounds for reclassification to the “use of the Internet” qualifier include non-authentic images (borrowed from open sources), lack of proper digital fixation of openness and account/ad posting attribution, and evidence proving only a communication channel without a content display.