Research On The Inheritance Of Social Network Accounts

In the era of information economy,social networking has become an important activity in people's production and life.And with the growth of users' age,the issue of the inheritance of social network accounts has gradually come to the vision of public and become a highly concerned topic.The legislation of China also attaches great importance to this.The General Provisions of Civil Law,which newly promulgated in 2017,protected virtual property such as social network account as the object of rights at first,this is a great effort and progress made by the legislation of China,breaking the situation of “zero” provision for the protection of virtual property in China.However,it is helpless because of this provision is only a general provision,which can not play an effective guiding role when facing the specific protection of virtual property such as social network account and whether it can be inherited.Based on this,it is necessary to study the inheritance of social network accounts to provide intellectual support for subsequent theoretical research and legislation.From the connotation of the social network account,the realization of social function of account can only be realized through the joint action of login number and content in account,so it should be understood in a broad sense,that is,the social network account including login number,password,nickname,avatar photo,chat record and the content released in account,etc.From the perspective of its possibility as a heritage,the social network account can be proved by traditional property law theory,and conforms to the value,scarcity and controllability of property,and has the comprehensive nature of right attribute in legal attribute,so it should be defined as a new type of property;the social network account is obtained by the consideration paid by the user,and its value is also created by the user,so it should belong to the user,it is the user's personal legal property and should be included in the property category confirmed by the inheritance law.From the perspective of the feasibility of the inheritance of social network account,the terms that the social network account belongs to the operator and shall not be inherited are stipulated in the user service agreement of the network platform,which are obviously unfair and invalid because the main rights of users are excluded;and there is no essential conflict between privacy protection and accountinheritance,because the essential purpose of protecting the deceased's privacy is to protect the legal heirs' identity interests,and the inheritance of the account by the testamentary heirs is also in line with the wishes of the deceased,there will be no conflict of interests and damage consequences.From the perspective of the construction of the inheritance rules of social network account,we should respect the autonomy of users and give priority to testamentary inheritance;based on its important spiritual value and the characteristics being able to log in on multiple devices at the same time,it can be inherited by the legal heirs when legal succession occurs;in addition,different inheriting methods should be adopted according to the nature of interests contained in different contents of the account.