Legal regime of a social network account within hereditary legal relations

The article is focused on identifying legal consequences of the death of a social network account’s subscriber and clarifying the possibility of applying the construction of all-purpose hereditary succession through the prism of the provisions of national and foreign legislation, developments of legal doctrine and caselaw materials. The purpose of the article is to determine the legal regime of a social network account within hereditary legal relations. To achieve the purpose of this research the author has used a range of general scientific and special methods of scientific cognition, in particular: dialectical, systematic and structural, methods of analysis, generalization, formal and logical (dogmatic), comparative and legal, method of modeling. It has been emphasized that a social network account has a complex nature and includes two elements – a user account and content. A user account does not belong to the objects of civil rights by its nature, since it is a set of certain information transmitted by a user to a certain computer system, and does not have a creative nature and property value. However, the content of an account may contain copyright items in some cases and / or related rights that have a digital method of recording. In this case the death of the account’s user gives rise to the succession of intellectual property rights to these items. The author, taking into account the situation of modern national legislation, has substantiated the conclusion that the death of the social network account’s user does not give rise to the succession of the rights to the account in the sense of all-purpose hereditary succession. It is explained by circumstances of a technical (obtaining access to the account of a deceased person) and legal (observing confidentiality of personal life of any user and third parties, clarifying the object of hereditary succession) nature. The author of the article has suggested to regulatory entrench the legal possibility of including ordinances regarding a social network account into the content of a last will and testament.

all-purpose hereditary succession, succession, inheritance, lawful heir, digital item of property, social network account, user account, digital content, copyright items