Dostęp do treści cyfrowych zmarłego użytkownika usług internetowych na tle orzeczenia Federalnego Trybunału Sprawiedliwości w Niemczech

Abstrakt

The article is an attempt to analyse the judgement of the German Federal Court of Justice in which this court ruled that in the event of death of a holder of a social network account, the usage agreement is transferring on to his/her heirs pursuant to Sec. 1922 BGB and the access to the deceased user?s account and the communication saved therein violates neither the posthumous personal rights of the testator nor the right to protection of personal data or confidentiality of correspondence. In the discussed judgement the problem of the legal succession of digital assets under the German law was elaborated quite extensively and for the most part it dispels the doubts arising in that jurisprudence. Nevertheless, after a closer analysis of the motives of the judgement and the conclusions presented therein, the author argues that the conclusions presented in the ruling cannot be directly applied in the Polish law. This is in particular because of differences between Polish and German rules of succession law. In spite of the above, the conclusions drawn from the justification of the analyzed ruling may also be helpful in the context of clarifying doubts as regards inheritance of digital assets of a deceased users of internet services which are present in the Polish jurisprudence.