ЦИФРОВІ ПРАВА: ПРАВОВА ПРИРОДА ТА ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ

The article considers the legal analysis of the protection of digital rights. The author investigates the legal nature and formation of digital rights, scientific views on understanding the concept and content of digital rights. It is established that digital rights are human rights exercised in the digital environment (usually on the Internet). It is proven that digital rights should be understood as a collective concept for those human rights that are related to digital technologies providing a mechanism for their implementation. It is substantiated that digital rights are divided into absolute digital (exercised exclusively in the digital environment) and partially (relatively) digital (with a dualistic legal nature: can be exercised online and offline). Absolute digital rights are highlighted to include: the right to digital freedom; the right to digital self-determination; the right to access the Internet; the right to be forgotten in the digital environment; the right to an account, the right to a web page; the right to a domain name; the right to a virtual image; the right to cryptocurrency; the right to NFTs, to other virtual assets; the right to personal digital security; the right to a computer program and others (the list is not exhaustive). It is substantiated that the right to digital freedom is the right to freely choose the possibilities of certain behaviour in the digital environment, taking into account the specifics of the websites used. The right to digital self-determination is denoted as the ability of a person to choose the way of his identification (stay) on the Internet, taking into account the capabilities of a specific website, the right to be online or not, the right to stream. The following features of digital rights are singled out: they are exercised in a digital environment, in particular, on the Internet; are extraterritoriality inherent in them; do not exist outside the digital environment (except for partial digital rights, which can be exercised "offline"); are ahead of the relevant legal regulation (since the rights appear and are exercised, and legal regulation of such relations is sometimes absent); arise in connection with the digitalization of society; the dependence of the content of the right on technological progress and the development of innovations that contribute to the emergence of new digital rights or provide new opportunities for the exercise of already existing digital rights; can be property and personal non-property, completely digital and partially (relatively) digital. It is proven that digital rights are a collective concept of those human rights that can be exercised in a digital environment; they combine various rights that have arisen and/or are exercised thanks to digital, information technologies and innovations. Keywords: digital environment, Internet, right to information, copyright, information technologies