Legal Research On Virtual Property Inheritance

As the human world steps into the era of Internet of everything,person and person are interconnected,person and things are also interconnected,daily life is more and more accustomed to the intervention of the Internet and the digital world.Inevitably,people start accumulating some so-called virtual properties,such as email accounts,social network profiles,game accounts and equipment,even digital replicas of themselves,like a digital avatar.According to article 127 of General Principles of Civil Code,"Where laws provide the protection of data and network virtual property,those provisions apply."This is the first time that Chinese law has written virtual property into articles of law and given protection to it in civil law.It is acknowledged that virtual property is the natural object of civil law to adjust which has the function of declaration and guidance.As a new type of property,virtual property lacks accurate and strict definition,so the academic circle usually defines its connotation and extension from the broad sense and narrow sense.Due to the rapid development of modern science and technology,the geometric growth of virtual property makes the legislation lag behind and cannot be fully enumerated.Therefore,this paper will take the form of"summary +enumeration"to classify and define the virtual property that exists in the reality and may be generated in the future,so as to carry out relevant regulations.According to the characteristics of virtual property,digitization,privacy and difficult price evaluation,this paper divides virtual property into account password category,file video category,game equipment category and virtual currency category.Due to the limitations of science and technology,the nature and ownership of virtual property is relatively complicated.The academic circle defines the nature of virtual property with nihilism theory,property right theory,creditor’s right theory,intellectual property right theory,intangible property theory and new-type property right theory,etc.This paper supports the viewpoint of property right theory of virtual property.With the continuous materialization of virtual property,the realistic value,future value,social value and economic value of virtual property are obvious.Virtual property rights should be legally recognized,and network users who hold virtual property should inherit their property in a certain way.China’s virtual property inheritance has some practical difficulties,including the lack of legislation,difficult to define the ownership,difficult to assess value,obscure boundary of privacy and inheritance to virtual property and virtual property in the absence of heir in title or other beneficiary.Refer to the extraterritorial legislation of virtual property inheritance,the United States uses the form of legislation of"digital assets" succession,Germany does not distinguish between virtual property and general property and completes the "telecommunications media" by using the way of indiscriminate inheritance,South Korea concerns the nature of virtual property as the real right of property inheritance,virtual property is defined as "electromagnetic record"regulation in Taiwan,China,which illuminates that China should clarify the legal status of virtual property,virtual property inheritance should be brought into the existing legal system,and the non-governmental organizations,the network platform developers,operators can work together to solve the problem of virtual property inheritance,while giving full play to the role of judicial interpretation and case guidance.The author tries to put forward the construction mode of the legislation of virtual property inheritance in China through the thinking of virtual property inheritance in our country,and analyzes the legislative elements such as the mode,object,subject,value assessment and segmentation of virtual property inheritance,so as to solve the legislative dilemma of virtual property inheritance to some extent.At the same time,the inheritance of virtual property should be supplemented and improved by means of licenses or leases in Network Services Protocol,digital estate escrow business and other social approaches.