A neglected problem has gradually surfaced: what should be done with a person's Internet legacy when he dies?
What is the Internet Heritage? Law: I don't know.
Before answering this question, perhaps we should clarify what is the Internet heritage. Wei, a lawyer at Beijing Beidou Dingming Law Firm, said that the term "Internet heritage" is not a legal term at present, because its definition has not yet reached a consensus.
"Even now, this concept is still very advanced." Lawyer Wei introduced that at present, there are only two vertical legislations specifically aimed at the Internet field, namely the Electronic Signature Law and the Cyber Security Law, and the others are administrative regulations and departmental rules with low effectiveness.
Last year, lawyer Wei set up a research group on "Internet plus law" in the law firm, hoping to provide some legislative ideas. In addition to non-governmental legal organizations, the official organization National Network Information Office is also taking the lead in studying and formulating relevant laws.
However, there are many conflicts between the technical logic of the Internet virtual world and the legal logic of making laws for real life, so it is not feasible to bring the real world to the Internet world. On the other hand, China's legal system is not perfect. Faced with the rapid changes of the Internet, the relevant research is insufficient and the legislation is lagging behind.
I'm afraid we won't see such an "internet law" in a few years. But the good news is that in the second half of 20 16, online virtual property and data information will become civil rights protected by law and written into the draft General Principles of Civil Law. This means that in the future, the inheritance of network virtual property is also likely to be put on the legislative agenda.
"So legislation is still promising, and China's' Internet Law' will definitely be born in the future." Lawyer Wei said.
The difficulty of internet inheritance-I don't know where your money is at all
Based on the perceptual knowledge of "internet heritage", it can be roughly divided into two categories-"assets" and "information".
Assets are actually money left on the internet, or things that can be converted into money. These data are also attached to financial institutions such as banks or funds in the real world. Compared with traditional forms, they lack physical documents such as passbook, bank card and purchase contract. Because of this, it is sometimes difficult for heirs to know what "legacy" the deceased left in the vast Internet world. According to the law, if an heir wants to claim property inheritance, he must first check the property of the deceased before proceeding to the next step.
Sorting out some of the most extensive Internet products at present, the Internet heritage of assets generally includes: the account balance in the third-party payment platform represented by Alipay and WeChat payment, the money fund represented by Yu 'ebao, the account balance of purchased Internet wealth management products (insurance, bonds, funds), online tokens (Q coins) and recharged Internet products (mobike, Easy Car), and network entities (Taobao shop, WeChat micro shop) that have traded.
At present, Alibaba is the representative of Internet companies in China, and it has clear regulations on the inheritance of Internet heritage based on assets:
Alipay and Yu 'ebao under Ant Financial Services Group: According to the regulations of Ant Financial Services, if the Alipay account has not been logged in for a long time due to the death of the user, the Alipay account will be cancelled. But the premise of cancellation is that there is no fund in the account. When there are funds, the account number and the funds (as well as the generated income), funds, insurance and other wealth management products in the account number will be kept until the heir withdraws them.
The withdrawal method is similar to the way to withdraw the deceased's deposit from the offline bank. Finally, the funds in the deceased Alipay will be remitted to the heir's bank account. In addition, if the deceased has debts such as ant flowers and borrowing flowers, the heirs also need to inherit their debts when they choose to accept the inheritance of the account holder.
In addition, Taobao has also formulated the relevant regulations on the inheritance and transfer of "online stores", and accordingly, only the death certificate of the deceased, the legal relationship certificate, the notarial certificate of inheritance and other materials are required. Alibaba has formulated rules related to Internet heritage, referring to the relevant provisions of the Inheritance Law.
However, according to an employee of Alibaba, for online stores, in fact, heirs have generally mastered the login account and password of the deceased through wills and other forms, so many heirs will not choose the "inheritance" mode, but directly log in to the account password of the deceased to continue their business.
However, this does not mean that the "inheritance" model is meaningless. It represents the importance that Internet companies attach to information inheritance, and it is established in the form of rules and regulations, which reflects the progress of ideas and respect for people.
In the inheritance of virtual property, foreign Internet companies have gone further. Recently, Blizzard, a well-known game company, announced a new policy on the inheritance of game accounts after the death of players: if the account owner dies unfortunately, he can transfer the account under his name to others after showing the "death certificate" and other materials.
Back in China's Internet companies, the information on the death certificate is actually difficult to relate to the account information. At present, there is no real-name registration system on most Internet in China, and the ID number can't actually correspond to the account number of the deceased. So if you don't know the account number, you can use the death certificate to inherit it, and the company can't find it. "So we think real-name registration system is a good start." Lawyer Wei said that she has always been very supportive of the Internet real-name registration system.
For the Internet heritage, "it is easy to learn from difficulties" is the key to the problem. This is true not only for the Internet heritage of "assets", but also for the Internet heritage of "information". Moreover, in a sense, the real Internet heritage is not "money", but "user information" that exists in a personalized state and remains in the Internet world.
Who will protect my social network after I die?
From the legal point of view, the "Internet heritage" on the information level has no significant economic value; But for the relatives and friends of the deceased, it has important emotional value and carries personal attributes. The law has the obligation and responsibility to protect them. However, there are almost no fully applicable laws and regulations for the "Internet heritage" of information. In case of disputes, lawyers can only look for relatively close legal provisions (such as copyright law, inheritance law, property law, etc.) from existing laws. ) provide legal relief.
The core of information Internet heritage should be social network. With the advent of the social media era, people's images on the Internet have begun to show distinct personality characteristics-every move and praise you make tells the world what kind of person you are.
Social networks have two subjects: accounts and content. At present, when registering an account, most Internet companies will prompt that the account ownership belongs to the company and the user only has the right to use the account. If the user dies and the account is inactive for a long time, the Internet company will have the right to cancel or cancel the account. At present, the accounts of mainstream social products such as WeChat, QQ, Weibo and Douban all follow this rule.
This is not reasonable! "Yes, this is really unreasonable, but rationality and legality are two different things." Lawyer Wei said that the root cause at present still lies in "no law to follow". At this time, the right to make rules is still in the hands of enterprises. Moreover, from the perspective of business logic, enterprises are right to do so: Internet companies consume resources to build platforms, but users use services for free, which in itself violates economic laws. The "ownership" without an account is actually the price that users have to pay when using the platform and its products.
On the other hand, websites also need to avoid liability risks. If the website is closed due to poor management in the future, the user's account on the website can be destroyed by the enterprise without burden. However, if the user has an account, the website will bear huge compensation liability when clearing the account data.
Clearing data is definitely not just about accounts, but also the information left by users on the website. Including published text, pictures, videos, audio and other forms of content.
Account is only the key, and the content published by users is more important than the account itself. From a legal point of view, the main body of content information generated by users is users themselves, and the ownership of this part of data also belongs to users themselves, so the company should have no right to destroy it.
Should the company hand over the account number and password of the deceased because of this? Many internet companies will still say "no" because they will consider the privacy of the deceased. There are precedents abroad. After the death of the deceased, the family asked to inherit his virtual property as a memory. However, the website believes that virtual property involves the privacy of the deceased. The deceased may be unwilling to disclose his contact information in the virtual world to the world, or to his heirs, and finally refuse to provide it.
Moreover, the precipitation of user data will occupy the storage space of the server and require cost development and maintenance. This is actually a burden for enterprises, unless someone is willing to pay for it, but who will pay for it has become a new problem.
Based on various contradictions, the law has not set the responsibility and obligation of business owners to retain user data for the time being. Enterprises can only rely on social supervision and enterprise self-discipline to store and protect user data.