The Scope of Penal Liability for the Editor-in-Chief of a Website in Kuwaiti Law: A Critical Analytical Study in Light of Law No. 8 of 2016 in the Organization of Electronic Media

This study aims to monitor and analyze the scope of the criminal liability of the website editor in Kuwaiti law by applying Law No. 8 of 2016 regulating electronic media, with the aim of monitoring the legal basis on which the criminal responsibility of the editor of the website is based, and identifying the scope of the criminal liability of the editor-in-chief of the website, all the way to revealing the features of the policy adopted by the Kuwaiti legislator in regulating the criminal responsibility of the editor-in-chief for the crimes of electronic press publishing. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach describing and analyzing the legal texts related to the criminal liability of the editor-in-chief of a website in Law No. 8 of 2016 regulating the electronic media, to reveal the features and nature of this responsibility, in addition to using the inductive method, by tracking and extrapolating the relevant legal texts in relevance to the subject of the study in order to clarify the method followed by the Kuwaiti legislator in regulating the criminal responsibility of the website editor. The study concluded that the Kuwaiti legislation is interested in appointing a responsible director as an “editor-in-chief” for the website or the electronic media outlet, whether in the law itself or its executive regulations, and despite the tendency of some countries to change their legislations to hold the editor-in-chief accountable for the actions of his subordinates as a flagrant violation of a constitutional principle which is Personality of criminal responsibility, except that the Kuwaiti legislator, in organizing the criminal liability of the website editor-in-chief has focused this responsibility in the person of the editor-in-chief on the basis of the presumed responsibility for the actions of others as he is responsible for all the crimes published by others within the website, that he presides over editing, for breaching the duty of effective censorship as the author of the publication decision.