The webcam industry - a new threat to public morality

This paper analyses a new «sexual surrogate», the webcam industry, i.e. the public online display of sexual material to satisfy the sexual and other needs of users of specific online venues via the Internet. The relevance of the study is primarily determined by the complexity, and sometimes impossibility, of qualifying the webcam industry as a phenomenon of modern criminal "digital" culture and the processes of its functioning in accordance with the norms of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The paper concludes that acts under Article 242 of the Criminal Code should be classified as offences against viewers, models, administrators and studio owners only in cases where pornographic content is fixed (recorded) for subsequent distribution. A proposal has been made to add new articles to the Criminal Code and the Administrative Offences Code, providing for liability for the public display of materials of a sexual nature in order to satisfy the sexual and other needs of users of special online venues via the Internet and the organization of such activities.