Category “Virtual Territory of the State”: Concept and Elements

The article discusses the category “virtual territory of the state”. The author considers the correctness of applying the characteristic “virtual” in comparison with the terms “informational” and “digital” already available in the legislation. The article substantiates the impossibility of recognizing the “state territory of the Russian Federation” as a legal offline analogue for the “virtual territory of the state”, which predetermines the impossibility of substantive expansion of the already established category. The text of the article identifies two elements from which the virtual territory of the state is formed: the space of certain sites on the Internet (state sites, sites in the Russian domain zone, other sites whose owners have expressed a desire to operate in accordance with Russian legislation, etc.) and the zone in the virtual space formed as a result of the actions of a subject specially designated in the law. Alongside the second element of the category under consideration, the author substantiates the need for its definition through the prism of the right to entrepreneurial and other activities not prohibited by law, as well as the legally established obligation to pay taxes. Based on the results of the research and analysis of current Russian legislation, the author concludes that economic activity in virtual space does not create a new digital right, but indicates the need to transform the already established economic legal entitlement as part of the digitalization process. At the same time, the domain (“virtual territory of the state”), in which the implementation of transformed legal provisions is supposed to be realized, has no offline analogues in the current Russian legislation and requires separate regulation taking into account the essential features of the phenomenon under consideration.