Digitale Inhalte und Dienstleistungen

The legal classification of access to digital content and services can have a significant impact on the rights and obligations of the parties. While customers regularly assume a comprehensive right of use and disposal, providers want to retain control over assigned digital copies of goods by means of technical precautions and contractual mechanisms. Based on an analysis of the legal foundations of the current law as well as the European rules for digital goods and services, the article addresses the question of how civil law measures can achieve a convergence between the diverging legal expectations of customers and providers. In particular, it deals with the question to what extent new rules have to follow the existing contract typology or how they can fit into it.