Man Equals Digital Personality vs. Man Has Digital Personality

Abstract

The Internet is an important part of modern life; however, most virtual processes are beyond the scope of legal control. The state as a legislator regulates relations that originate in the real world. As a result, the law often fails to take into account the specifics of virtual environment. The poor legal regulation comes from the fact that the legislator cannot determine whether digital rights and freedoms are new categories or a continuation of the existing legal provisions. In this article, the author attempts to identify the correct approach by answering the obvious question: Is there a digital life and a separate digital personality, or is the digital space a continuation of the constitutional right to life exercised by a real-life legal subject? The research relied on standard methods of cognition and specific scientific methods, e.g., comparative and formal logical analyses. While analyzing the concept of the constitutional right to life, the author defines the categories of digital image and digital personality in order to develop a variant of legal regulation of digital rights and freedoms. The validity of digital personality depends on the approach the legislator chooses to regulate digital rights and freedoms. If the legislator sees digital rights and freedoms as a continuation of the rights and freedoms that exist in reality, a digital personality is impossible: it is a digital image of a real person in virtual space. If the legislator evaluates rights and freedoms as a new category, a digital personality is a valid concept, but only in the context of artificial intelligence.