The legal nature of online accounts: Property, liability or Something Else?

The article analyzes the legal nature of online accounts. Accounts are widely used by Internet users in today’s digitalized world and often have a considerable economic and personal value for their owners. In practice, accounts are often transferred from one person to another, both permanently and temporarily. Nevertheless, agreements concerning accounts often turn out to be unenforceable in court, service providers do not exercise the account owners’ will concerning accounts in the event of their death, and it is generally difficult for individuals to protect their rights in relations concerning online accounts.

These problems are caused by a lack of understanding of the legal nature of accounts at the doctrinal level and, as a result, a lack of consistent legislative regulation of these issues or application of existing legal provisions in case law. In general, there are three approaches to understanding the nature of accounts: (a) accounts are not objects of civil rights at all – only their content can be an object; (b) accounts can be objects only of contractual relations; (c) accounts can be objects of property relations and by their nature are quasi-things. In light of the recent amendments to the Civil Code of Ukraine and the introduction of the concept of «digital thing», the question of the legal nature of accounts becomes even more acute, since formally, under an expanded interpretation of the concept of «digital thing», accounts may also be covered by this concept.

However, the article consistently argues that accounts are objects of contractual relations, and therefore their turnover is possible only under the rules of assignment and transfer of debt in a contractual obligation. In order to ensure that this approach is applied in practice, it is necessary to introduce specific amendments to the civil legislation of Ukraine. In particular, the author substantiates the need to amend Articles 512 and 520 of the Civil Code of Ukraine, as well as to introduce special rules for access to account content by heirs, guardians, and property managers of account holders.