A Study On Inheritance Of Virtual Properties

In recent years,with the rapid development of economic,scientific and technological level,the era of digital economy has strode,the network has developed rapidly and become an indispensable part of daily life and work,and the masses have become more dependent on the network.The role of network has grown greater and the experience of digital life has become more ample.However,there are no clear legal provisions and accurate theoretical expressions on the issues of network virtual property that is a special existence form.Plenty of researchers have begun to study and discuss some issues of virtual properties,but there are few consistent opinions.The relevant legal regulations are more scarce,which fails to match the current social situation that network and informatization have become common and developed;at present,there have been many disputes on network virtual properties and even the inheritance of virtual heritage,which all get into trouble during the trial due to the lack of legal provisions.The determination of legal identity for property in network,the status of network property in Inheritance Law and the establishment of inheritance procedure of virtual properties have become pressing issues and also the unavoidable issues in the revision and improvement of Inheritance Law in China,which brings a big challenge to the Chinese scholars and lawmakers.The primary task to study inheritance in network is to determine whether the virtual property can be inherited and the author thinks that the virtual property should belong to legal property.Firstly,although virtual property is different from general property in terms of appearance form,it satisfies the features of property: property is the generic term of objects(including tangible objects and intangible objects)and rights,property has value(including economic value and spiritual value)and property is protected by law.With social and economic development as well as technological development,the definition of property should be changed and enriched continuously and the extension of property should be broadened constantly;hence,it is hermeneutically reasonable to divide virtual property into the scope of property.Secondly,different types of virtual properties are assigned to real right and creditor’s right respectively and should be equipped with all the ancillary rights of property.Thirdly,the ownership of or right to use virtual properties should belong to the user.To sum up,virtual property should be the legal property and should be inherited.Referring to foreign advanced practices coupled with Chinese practices,the elements of virtual property inheritance of China can be explored.Firstly,a set of inheritance procedure with strong operability should be established and the basic framework of this procedure shall be declaration of death of deceased-publicity of all the virtual properties of deceased by operator(if the inheritor has known that the deceased owns certain virtual properties,step into the next application stage)-filing of an application and material submission by deceased-data verification by operator-transfer of property with the assistance of operator after verification.Secondly,classification method should be applied to study and determine the matching inheritance subject and mode of virtual heritage of each category.However,it is inevitable that the network heritage will encounter difficulties during the inheritance process,such as value determination of virtual properties,ownership of heirless virtual properties and resolution of conflict between inheritance right and privacy right of virtual properties and thus the feasible treatment methods should be probed.Many foreign countries have begun to protect virtual properties through legal provisions and likewise,China should strive to find a whole set of strategies with perfect legislation for the protection of virtual properties.Firstly,the legal identity of virtual heritage should be clarified and the objective position in Inheritance Law should be granted to it so that virtual heritage can walk to the front of law.Secondly,virtual heritage should be safeguarded through legislation from the aspect of network supervision so that network service providers can be clear about their limits of acts;in this way,the unfair phenomenon of unequal right and obligation between network service provider and network player can be reduced.