Legal Protection Of Data Property Interests Of Social Network Platforms

The rise of social network platform is the result of the continuous extension of social network media to the network space in the big data era,which takes platform as an important way of infrastructure and economic development.Along with rapid development of digital economy,enterprises represented by social network platforms increasingly take the initiative to acquire users’ data and invest a large amount of human,material and financial resources to form data products to improve users’ experience and the competitive position of the platform,which has become an important force to promote the development of digital economy.Legal relations such as contract,tort and unfair competition have been formed between platforms and users as well as between platforms and third-party users.Property right definition is important that it inspires enterprises for digital impetus of economic investment.But data intensified disputes(such as “Sina v.Maimai” and “We Chat’s Reading” case)and the Civil Code leaves data legal protection for the future legislative provisions,which exposes at present there are many inadequacies in the attribution identification and protection of data rights on social network platform.In the absence of relevant laws,the scholars start from the theory of data property and try to define the platform data property from the perspective of rights.However,the traditional property rights theories have many shortcomings,such as the ownership theory neglects the non-exclusivity of data,the protection of intellectual property rights is not extended,and the creditor’s rights is too conservative.The new enterprise data property right theory still cannot break out of the property right framework and cannot balance the relationship between data utilization and governance.Considering the characteristics of platform data,such as non-exclusivity,interlaced interest and half openness of use state,it is more theoretical and practical significance to define and protect platform data property from the perspective of legal interests.On this basis,the scope of platform data property is divided into the collection of users’ original data and the derivative data products after processing the original data.The types of data property can be classified into general data and data with both active and defensive expectations for protection in specific scenarios.For the choice of protection mode of platform data property interests,domestic and foreign judicial practice mainly adopts the path of competition law protection,intellectual property law protection and personal information law protection.However,there are some problems in judicial adjudication,such as complicated identification procedure,difficulty in proving evidence,too strict authorization rules and paying attention to the relief after the infringement.Therefore,in the face of the lack of special data legislation,the most important task is to clarify the legal types and relationships of the use of data property disputes on social network platform,and establish a phased and scenario protection path.On the one hand,it provides rules for the platform to create and utilize data property through the allocation of data power in four different stages of collection,storage,processing and transaction,and stimulates the platform’s creative power.On the other hand,through sorting out the judicial disputes,the platform data property disputes are divided into the following four scenarios: the first is the scene where the platform infringes on the user’s personal personality and information rights and interests.In this scenario,the platform should fulfill the security obligation of high-risk protection for the private data that can be identified by individuals.For data such as friends list,which are both expected and defensively utilized,the user authorization is taken as the benchmark,and the expectation of general rational person is measured by combining data usage scenarios to measure whether it meets the user’s utilization expectation.Secondly,the third party obtains the data of social network platform through crawler without the consent of the platform and users.In this scenario,for the undisclosed data,no matter what purpose and means the third-party platform is based on,it constitutes infringement.For open data,judges need to judge whether it constitutes unfair competition from such factors as the nature and purpose of crawling data,whether the use of data is innovative,and whether it has an impact on the normal operation of the platform.Thirdly,the third party obtains the user’s consent without the platform’s consent to obtain the user’s data.For the original data in this scenario,if there is a competitive relationship between the third-party application and the platform,it should be authorized by the platform;otherwise,the third-party application can directly obtain the consent of the data subject.Derivative data products must be authorized by the platform before they can be used.The fourth is the scenario of data acquisition and use by third-party applications beyond the developer agreement.In this scenario,the principle is to follow the autonomy of the meaning of the contract,but when necessary,the judge can investigate whether the parties know about the modification of the contract and whether the data acquisition conforms to the principle of minimum and necessary by means of interpretation.No matter whether the future data protection is in the form of special legislation or further promoted by judicial interpretation,above protection paths can provide theoretical support.In the specific level of conflict of interest,due to the special source of platform data,there are conflicts among personal personality interests,platform property interests and social public interests.Since data protection spans both public law and private law,the principle of proportionality has become the best way to coordinate conflicts of interest and provides an operable scheme for the balance of conflicts of interest.Firstly,in the face of conflicts between personal interests and platform property interests,the principle of giving priority to the protection of personal interests is taken as the principle and reasonable use behavior in proportion is also respected: if personal privacy is involved,personal personality interests should be protected first;while for general data,after obtaining users’ authorization and anonymization,platform data property interests and personal data interests are in the same protection status.The platform does not need to obtain the users’ consent for the secondary use of data based on the original purpose.Secondly,facing the conflict between public interest and platform property interest,we must insist on protecting the public interest preferentially and strengthen the awareness of social responsibility of the platform.It is important to establish and improve the data compliance and disclosure system of the platform.Thirdly,in the face of platform operators interests conflict with the interests of the competitors,equal protection principle is the foundation.The judge needs to take the scope of business,consumer rights and interests as well as the property contribution of the data into consideration.Then determine whether it meets the reasonable expectation of the operator and whether it constitutes a substantial substitute for the operator to provide services,and take timely action preservation measures to prevent further damage.