The Civil Law Protection Of The Right To Privacy In The Internet

Science and technology have been always a double sword .Today as the use of internet is more and more convenient, and the storage and exchange of information on the internet come to be prevalent, the technology of the internet has provided people a fast and convenient way to communicate. However, the internet created a"transparent society", in which everyone's privacy is disappearing. An internet system without law regulation is dangerous, because if privacy in the internet space can not be protected internet will lose its inexhaustible drive in its development. Comparing with western countries, actually in our country to take charge of protecting the right of privacy in the internet, existing as a new internet concept, is not totally the same with to assure it legally and protect it. For a long time our country does not take the protecting of privacy seriously, and the awareness of protecting either commercial internet or the citizens'personal privacy is rather weak, which is the result of historical remaining of traditional legal culture. Violations of rights happened on the internet but did not receive their due punishment since we basically have no law to stick to in protecting internet privacy for the time being. This is not good for regulating the management of internet and to promote its healthy development. Today, when many countries in the world acknowledge the right of privacy, the legislation of our country still doesn't stipulate the right of network privacy, which is a serious oversight of legislation. Therefore, we should learn from the experience and practices of foreign countries, in order to realize the anatomizes between domestic legislation and overseas legislation. At the same time, combining with our country's reality to establish protective framework of civil law to protect network privacy right in our country, it has become an urgent affair to strengthen and improve the legislative protection of the network privacy right. The discussion conducted in the paper is just for such purposes. This paper discusses the content and particularity of the network privacy right, expatites the actual conditions of the network privacy protection by domestic and overseas existing legislations, analyses the advantages and drawbacks of these legislations, and put forward the contrivance of establishing the framework of civil law in our country to protect network privacy right. The paper consists of three parts:The first part is an overall analysis on the network privacy rights. It first tells the definition of internet privacy rights, which ,as an extension of the traditional view of the cyber circumstance refers to the rights of selfhood that every netizen should enjoy in the form of personal peace and private information under the protection from the law, and all rights should not be illegally infringed, familiarized, copied and employed. It also indicates the prohibition against the illegal revelation about the sensitive information related to the individual on line, with facts, pictures and some demeaning remarks included. Then it follows the content of the internet privacy rights, including the right to know, the right to choose, the right to control, the rights to submit safe request, the right to benefit from privacy, the right to utilize and restrict and the right to enjoy legitimate aids. Thirdly, it introduces the peculiarity of internet privacy rights compared with the traditional privacy right: the substantive increase and complexity of internet privacy rights; its compoundness embedded in selfhood rights and property rights; fragility vulnerable to harm, uncontrollability and destructiveness on the occasion of infringement upon the internet privacy rights; the reinforcement and expansion of the internet privacy rights.The second part is a survey of the legislation condition of various countries around the world as well as the comment and the analysis of it. It begins with a survey of the legislation in America, European Union, Canada and Japan, then continues with an introduction to our present legislation concerning our internet privacy right, and concludes with the comment and analysis of legislation protecting the internet privacy right in various countries around the world. Until now no country has established a complete legislation to cope with the privacy infringement on the internet, but the problem has been a concern of most countries. In countries with more developed internet technology, some relevant legislation has been established.However, all of these laws have certain defects and need to be further improve. In China, especially, the legislation for the protection of net privacy is weak. The present laws in China do not have any specific items for this protection, but only some protections in comparison with traditional ones. They are very sporadic and ineffective, lack of real regulation and operationallity, and the measures taken are too weak to offer enough protections. Some trespassing behaviors can not be punished under the current laws. So we can not face the new challenge for this protection brought by the rapid development of information technology and the wide application of electric products.The third part is the idea to set up the framework of the civil law protection for net privacy right in China. Regard the right for net privacy right as a special right under special protection. In the framework of civil law protection, it contains the protected objects, basic principles, subjects for right and responsibility, the affirmation of the invasive behavior to others'net privacy right and the regulation of the responsibility for invasion. In the net environment, the key to legal protection for privacy is to make sure the protected privacy scale. In the net environment, the content for privacy includes personal data and private activity domain, with the former the most important. The basic principle is in the laws, regulations and policies. The legislation, execution, jurisdiction and complying for the protection of net privacy right are the roots for thought-direction and regulation. The main principles are the principles for autonomy, for harmlessness, for intelligence and for agreement. The natural person whose personal information is regarded as personal data to be collected is the subject for protection. His rights are the contents for net privacy right. The subject for responsibility refers to that who can legally collect, possess, control and sue the relevant data. His responsibilities include to instruct, to remind and to sue reasonably these personal data. It makes a regulation according to the definition of the invasion of net privacy right, and lists several forms which are regarded as invasive behaviors, such as publicizing others'privacy right on the net without their assent, or revising or peeping others'e-mails. At last, the civil responsibility for the trespass of net privacy right is discussed, mainly including stopping trespassing, preventing from doing harm, eliminating effect and restoring reputation.