Research On The Law Construction Of Right Of Personal Information In China

Right of personal information refers to the rights of information subjects to dominate and control the personal information and exclude being violated according to the law. It carries the personality interests and property interests of information subjects, and directly related to the dignity and freedom of individual. It is different from the traditional privacy, which is passive and defensive. It also differs from name right, portraiture right, reputation right and other specific right of personality. As for its legal attribute, right of personal information is a separate right of personality. With the coming of the information era, multiple-use of personal information has become a trend, but it also brings more and more personal information disputes. However, under the current legal framework, there is not any, or even one complete civil law concentrate on protecting personal information. The judicial practices only protect name, portraiture, privacy and other direct personal information, which are closely related to individual’s dignity. The deficiency of right of personal information protection both in legislation and practices calls on the law construction of right of personal information.In the current stage of rule by law, studying and learning from foreign legislation on personal information on the basis of our national conditions is the inevitable way of China’s law construction of right of personal information. The law construction of right of personal information in legislative mode should be conduced from two levels:civil code and personal information protection law. In the future civil code, right of personal information is separate rather than attached to privacy. Information subjects have right to decide by himself/herself when, where and how to collect, handle and use his/her personal information. Besides, right of personal information has various contents, and contains many technical entries, thus, it is necessary to construct personal information protection law which is separate from the civil code to protect the dignity of information subjects and the rational circulation of the information. During the law construction of right of personal information, it should be explicited that information subjects enjoy the right to know, correct, delete, blockade his/her personal information, and ask for payment for the use of it, and exercise of the right of personal information is certain restricted. Compared to the traditional right of personality, right of personal information bears property interests and has positive functions like enquiry and correction. Thus, the civil liabilities of infringing right of personal information should be definite.