According to the announcement, the patent provides an information processing method and related device in the inheritance and transfer of digital asset certificates, which is used to realize the unified maintenance of users' digital asset certificates, so that even at the end of users' life cycle, related digital asset certificates can be automatically and safely transferred to heirs.
How to find a resting place for the "relics" left by the deceased in cyberspace is also a problem that society needs to explore and solve in the process of digitalization.
According to the statistics of China Internet Center, in recent years, Internet users in China have gradually extended to high-age groups, and people will eventually die. The phenomenon of digital assets left by the deceased on the Internet will become more and more frequent, and the problem of digital assets inheritance will become more and more urgent.
According to Cao Wei, an associate professor at the School of Civil and Commercial Law of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, there is no clear definition of "digital assets" in China. Article 127 of the Civil Code stipulates: "If the law has provisions on the protection of data and network virtual property, those provisions shall prevail." This shows that the Civil Code generally recognizes and protects digital assets.
In specific legal practice, there are many discussions about the nature of digital assets such as virtual goods and application accounts. In July 2009, Lin Jiazhong, a player of online game "mir Legend", sued Shanda for the disappearance of game equipment, which was pronounced in Wenzhou Intermediate People's Court of Zhejiang Province. The plaintiff claimed that Shanda maliciously deleted the equipment and returned it, but the court refused to support it because of insufficient evidence.
However, the judgment particularly emphasizes: "In the Internet age, online games, as an entertainment tool, not only bring spiritual pleasure, but also generate virtual property benefits. Although there is no provision in China's Property Law, as an intangible property, online virtual goods can be linked with real estate in real life and have exchange value, but it still does not change online games as the core value of people's spiritual needs. "
It is worth noting that there are also disputes on the ownership determination of domestic Internet platforms based on their own application accounts. In April this year, Tencent took the game trading platform DD373 to court on the grounds that DD373 provided tencent games's "Dungeon and Warrior" account and game currency trading, which harmed Tencent's interests. The plaintiff's lawyer pointed out that users do not own the property ownership of data, virtual goods and accounts, only the right to use them, and players are not allowed to trade game accounts and game coins without Tencent's permission.
Xia Hailong, a lawyer of Shanghai Shenlun Law Firm, explained that from a technical point of view, the essence of a network account is access to a certain system, and behind the access is a series of software and hardware services such as platform software, code and server. Therefore, the platform party has the absolute right to decide under what circumstances, who can access its own system and for how long. "Based on the laws and regulations related to property rights and contracts, it is legal that the right to use the user account belongs to the user terms of the platform." However, Xia Hailong also pointed out that the ownership of all kinds of content published by users on the network platform and the acquired virtual property is not included here: "If there is no special agreement in the user agreement, users enjoy intellectual property rights for articles, pictures and other content published on social networks, while paid online accounts are also a kind of property, and network software such as points and virtual property also has property properties."
The patent authorization granted by Tencent mainly involves the digital assets left by the account holder after his death, that is, the digital heritage. At present, the academic definition of this is that "digital heritage refers to the items stored in a certain carrier or network in the form of digital information when a natural person dies, such as Q coins, personal photo albums, personal documents, etc."
In the concept of ordinary netizens, all kinds of online accounts have strong personal attributes. They often hope to inherit the accounts of relatives and friends or keep their accounts after their death.
However, Cao Wei pointed out that even though we legally accept the conclusion that the account holder "owns" its digital assets, unlike the real thing, digital assets are controlled by the service agreement signed between the Internet service provider and the account holder. Therefore, the inheritance of digital assets is bound to be affected by service agreements.
As mentioned above, various social software user agreements often stipulate that the ownership of user accounts belongs to the platform. On the issue of digital heritage inheritance, Internet service providers usually adopt a restrictive or prohibitive attitude in the terms of the Network Service Agreement (TOSA).
Even in a few cases where digital heritage is allowed to inherit, because most network service providers reserve the right to modify the content of the agreement at any time in TOSA, whether their digital heritage can be inherited when users die is still facing great uncertainty.
In foreign countries, the inheritance of digital assets has always been a key topic of social discussion.
In 2004, an American father applied to Yahoo for the email address of his son who died in the Iraq war, but Yahoo refused to keep the account private. After the two parties went to court, the court ruled that Yahoo would burn the files in the mailbox on a CD and give them to his father. This case is also known as the first case of American digital heritage.
In 20 12, a German woman was crushed to death by a train in Berlin subway station. The mother of the deceased asked Facebook to let her check her daughter's activities and communication records in Facebook account, but Facebook also refused on the grounds of protecting privacy. After several years of difficult litigation, the German Federal Supreme Court ruled in July 20 18 that after the death of the account holder, the social network account she used before her death can be inherited by relatives like letters, and the mother can inherit the account of her late daughter.
Xia Hailong believes that according to China's existing laws and regulations, the nature of Internet accounts is more of a contractual right, with strong personal attributes and weak property attributes. Therefore, in the absence of clear agreement, based on the laws and regulations related to property rights and inheritance, it is difficult to directly ask the platform to deliver the account password to the heir.
At present, there are two modes to deal with digital assets after the death of network users: network service provider control and third-party hosting. However, in practice, there are still legal and technical obstacles and risks in how to deal with the privacy of the original owner and others and how to identify the heir.
On 20 15, Facebook introduced the "heir" system, where users can designate a trustee to handle account matters after their death. At this year's Apple WWDC2 1 Developer Conference, iCloud was officially upgraded to iCloud+, allowing users to transfer their digital assets to other relatives and friends.
It is worth noting that in the "heir" system, Facebook particularly emphasizes that heirs cannot delete or modify the content once published by the parties, nor can they view the private information received before, thus protecting the privacy of their accounts to a certain extent.
Xia Hailong believes that some content and social relationships posted by users on online platforms may not be disclosed to any third party, including their immediate family members. "Therefore, after the death of the user, the platform party has no right to disclose and dispose of the user information without authorization, and should still fulfill its confidentiality obligations."
In terms of legislation, in 20 14, the United States federal unified state law committee promulgated the model law "Unified Trustee Access to Digital Assets" for the inheritance of digital assets, which implied that the trustee was authorized to access the digital assets of the deceased-unless the account holder explicitly stated before his death that others were not allowed to access the digital assets independently of the network service agreement, the trustee could obtain the "legal consent" to access the digital accounts and assets of the deceased by default. At this time, the legal status of the trustee is equal to that of the account holder, and the network service provider shall not refuse the trustee's access request.
However, the bill has also been questioned in the United States. In the second year of the bill, the American Center for Democracy and Technology, the Consumer Association and other organizations jointly issued an open letter, arguing that the bill ignored the difference between digital assets and physical assets, which easily led to privacy leaks and other issues.
Cao Wei pointed out that whether the right of inheritance can inherit digital assets with privacy and personality, how to deal with the privacy of the deceased and the conflict between the privacy of others in the network of the deceased and the right of inheritance are controversial. Even assuming that personal information can be inherited, the confidentiality obligation of the platform is equally difficult to define.
He believes that Tencent's patent application may be an attempt to solve domestic related problems, but whether it is the protocol control mode of network service providers or the hosting mode of third parties, it mainly reflects a spontaneous arrangement of the market. Although it should be affirmed that the market is the main way of resource allocation, it is obviously unreasonable for network service providers to determine the rules of transfer and inheritance of digital assets through TOSA under the background that the initial rights allocation of digital assets is still unclear.
"In other words, we can't completely leave the issue of regulating the transfer of digital assets to the market."
For more information, please download 2 1 financial APP.