Social networks: Problem of Users’ Exclusive Rights Protection (original) (raw)

2017, Yankovskiy R.M. Social networks: Problem of Users’ Exclusive Rights Protection // Intellectual Property Law: collection of studies. Ed. by Afanasieva E.G.

With new online communication, legal regulation needs revision; in particular, the additional regulation of social media accounts as the new state of things exposes them to the risk of infringement. Hundreds of millions of people use social media. For example, vk.com alone hosts more than 380 million accounts with more than 80 million daily visits. Social media aggregate the consumers of advertising, goods, and services. We looked at legal relations between vk.com and its users. The purpose of this research is to analyze whether or not the internal rules and procedures of social media – e.g. vk.com – are compliant with Russian law and to review legal issues arising among users. VK (short for VKontakte or “in contact” in English) is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. VK is available in multiple languages but its primary audience is Russian speakers. VK users can share public or private messages, create online groups, communities, public pages, and events, share and tag images, audio, and video, and play browser-based games. In August 2018, VK had more than 500 million accounts. VK ranks the 19th (August 2019) in Alexa's top 500 sites on the web. It is the most popular website in Russia. According to SimilarWeb, VK is the 14th most visited website in the world.