Virtual Property Issues:legal Attribute And Protection

In 21^st Century, information technology and network technology are playing roles of growing importance in our everyday lives. These high technologies provide huge power to improve human's living condition and push the development of the whole society. The innovation and development of technology need a fundamental institutional basis, especially legal system which shall change and update as the technology develops. Virtual property is a new product born in high technology society. This new product brings people not only fun and joys but also troubles and disputes. The disputes arouse by virtual property challenge and question our current law. What is its legal attribute? Whether it is a kind of legal property? How to protect this kind of property? These questions are impossible to avoid and they are also the key concerns in virtual property study. To answer these questions, we need to redefine"property"and describe the legal attributes of virtual property.In real life, the entertainment value or service value of virtual property has been realized in Online Games and BBS Forum. At the same time, some kinds of virtual property also have exchange value via some web trading platform like TAOBAO and eBay. Thus, the value of virtual property and its need of legal protection have been agreed by most people. The purpose of this study is to establish a protection system on virtual property based on its history and development and experience of other countries. First, the starting point of this study is the history of virtual property and then lead to the definition of this kind of fresh property: virtual property is a kind of digital property born in Online Games or BBS forum which may have real exchange value. The essence of virtual property is the binary data stored in the server of internet service providers. Virtual property owes the characters of ordinary property which are scarcity, usefulness and exchangeability. It also has specific characters which are dependence, virtual and non-permanent.Second, the legal attribute of virtual property is also needed to be clarified. There are some theory disputes on this topic. By comparing those opinions on its legal attribute including"Nothingness","Real rights","Intellectual property rights"and"creditor's rights", the author think the virtual property is a kind of creditor's rights and the fundamental legal relationship is the contractual relationship between the internet service provider and user.The third chapter and fourth chapter of this study focus on the legal protection of the virtual property. Before establishing a protecting system, this study firstly describes the ordinary kinds of torts on virtual property which including physical damage to the data storage system from third party in bad faith and contractual disputes between the service supplier and user. Secondly, this study compares the other countries'experiences on virtual property protect and the relevant regulations China has now. Then, this study provides a protection system focusing on the rights and obligations of the parties of internet service contract. The protection system not only argues for a stronger supervision from the government on Online Game market but also require a proper game concept of internet users.