The defamation crime finds its foundation in the need to guarantee the reputation of the individual, or the honor understood in a subjective sense, what consideration that the external world has of the subject himself.
The legal good subject to protection is the reputation of the offended person.

The conditions of the crime are as follows:

This is the crime of event, which is consumed in the moment of perception by the third of the defamatory words.

The conduct is discriminated against in the event of exercising the right to report, criticism and satire, When implemented within the limits of truth, Personance and relevance.

The defamation crime punishes who, communicating with more people, voluntarily go an offense to the reputation of an absent person.

Constitute essential requirements, For the purposes of configuring the case in question: The offense of the other reputation; impossibility, for the taxable person, to physically perceive the offense caused to him; the presence of at least two people.

You have to, first of all, specify that for “reputation” We mean the esteem that others have a person's moral sphere, in the environment in which it lives, which receives protection from law as the interest of the subject in its conservation and respect for the affiliates.

The typical conduct of the defamation crime consists, therefore, in the documents with which the agent communicates, to at least two people, the offense to the reputation of a third party. This behavior can be made by any means and in any way, provided that it is suitable to communicate the offense to the reputation of others. The agent can, therefore, resort, eg, to use words, written, drawings, paintings or photographs.
The criminal conduct can also consist of omissions, provided that its criminal intention can prove.
In any case, To detect pursuant to the standard in question, The conduct must be illegitimate, that is, not justified by the fulfillment of a legal obligation, nor from the exercise of a subjective right or legitimate interest, neither, Still, from the consent of the person who should be offended.
In the event that the agent realizes more offensive communications against the same person, They consider themselves as a single crime if they take place in a single context of action, while they contribute in the event that they occur in different contexts.

The agent's conduct must be, also, realize, through a communication aimed at several people. The latter is considered suitable to integrate the crime in question if two or more people, other than the agent or its competitor, have news of the offense, at the same time or even in subsequent moments.

Material object of the crime is the person who is offended by the conduct of the agent subject. If the offended people are more than one, More hypotheses of defamation are considered in competition with each other.

The typical event of the crime of defamation is represented by the perception of the offense by the two or more people to whom the criminally relevant communication is addressed. To this end, it is not sufficient or mere externalization without perception, as in the event that it is aimed at a distracted person, considering that communication implies a bilateral relationship to give and receive the news, nor the mere perception not accompanied by the understanding of the offensive meaning of the adjustment.
Considering that the offense can be communicated to at least two people both at the same time and in subsequent moments, The crime is considered consumed with the perception of the offense by the second person to whom it was communicated.

In the generality of cases, the attempt to defamation cannot be admissible. However, in relation to particular methods of the fact, It can be configured: if you think, eg, to the case of the offense that is made through a writing addressed to several people, who, But, does not reach its destination for reasons independent of the will of the agent.

It is sufficient that, in the hands of the agent, The generic willful misconduct exists, considering that the rule in question does not require any specific purpose, but only the consciousness and will of the offense and its communication to two or more people.

In order for the crime of defamation to be considered configured is, then, it is necessary that the person offended is in the impossibility of physically perceiving the offense to himself addressed. This circumstance occurs, alternatively, If the offended person is absent, or in the event that it, albeit present, did not perceive the offense.
Just the requirement of the absence of the offended person differentiates the crime of defamation from the case, now decriminalized, of injury, which, Pursuant to the repeal art. 594 c.p., required the necessary presence of the offended person.

The paragraphs 2, 3 e 4 of the standard in question provide for some special aggravating circumstances of an objective nature, concerning the methods of the fact or the personal qualities of the offense.
Pursuant to the paragraph 2, The defamation is, first of all, aggravated, If the agent attributes a determined fact to the offended person, that is, a fact specifically identified in its circumstances of time or place, or in its essential methods.
Pursuant to the paragraph 3, instead, The crime is aggravated in the event that the communication is made through the means of the press, with another means of advertising, or with a public act. The defamation results, also, aggravated, under subsection 4, If the offense is brought to a political body, administrative or judicial, or to its representation or to an authority set up in the college.

L’art. 598 c.p. provides for the application of a cause of exclusion of the punishment of the fact if the offenses are contained in the writings presented or in the speeches pronounced by the parties or by their patronagers in the proceedings before the judicial authority, that is, in the face of an administrative authority, If the offenses concern the object of the cause or administrative appeal. The paragraph 2 of the same standard provides, however, that the judge can order the suppression or cancellation, in whole or in part, offensive expressions, assign, also, to the offended person a sum as compensation for non -pecuniary damage.

Another cause of exclusion of the punishment of the fact is, also, provided for by the second paragraph of art. 599 c.p., With reference to the case in which the offense suitable for integrating the defamation followed by a provocation, that is, it was committed in the state of anger determined by an unjust fact of others, what its direct consequence. “Unfair” It is both the fact and it results, in itself, illegal, is what is accomplished in an anti -juridical way. The injustice of the fact is the necessary prerequisite for the exclusion of punishment.
This cause of exclusion of punishment is considered applicable also in the event that the accused is not the person towards whom the unfair fact was directed, well, the latter, having been accomplished towards a person linked to him by a relationship that justifies solidarity in resentment. The putative provocation is also admissible, provided that the erroneous opinion on the injustice of the fact is reasonable and the reaction is timely.

L’art. 596 c.p., in paragraph 1, establishes, In relation to the defamation crime, The principle of exclusion of liberating proof. This means that those who have made themselves guilty of the crime of defamation, cannot try, at his own, the truth or notoriety of the fact attributed to the offended person. The truth or notoriety of the offensive facts, therefore, do not exclude the crime of defamation, which is why the relative test is inadmissible as it is irrelevant. The paragraphs 2 e 3 of the same rule provide, But, some derogations to this principle, admit, eg, The proof of the truth of the fact if the offended person is a public official and the fact attributed to him refers to the exercise of his functions.