Content deleted Content added
m link [cC]loud storage service |
VulcanSphere (talk | contribs) →Digital estate plans: Wikilinking digital will |
||
| (25 intermediate revisions by 8 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{Short description|Passing down of digital assets after a person's death}}
'''Digital inheritance''' is the passing down of [[digital assets]] to designated (or undesignated) [[Beneficiary|beneficiaries]] after a person’s death as part of the estate of the deceased. The process includes understanding what digital assets exist and navigating the rights for heirs to access and use those digital assets after a person has died.
Line 14 ⟶ 15:
==Digital estate and digital assets==
{{main|Digital assets}}
The term ''digital estate'' refers to the inheritable digital assets included in a
Two principal issues arise over a person's digital estate. First, the inheritability of the digital content must be determined. Only digital content for which the deceased holds the copyright may be passed down to an inheritor. There is a distinction in law between full ownership and right-to-use licenses such as in software, digital music, film and books and there is legal precedent for denying resale or bequest of these.<ref>
== Obstacles to digital inheritance ==
Line 24 ⟶ 25:
===Contracts===
Contracts with service providers may be automatically terminated (by the terms of service) when a customer dies. This may mean that there is no right for heirs to access that data. This is compounded by the fact that many digital assets are only granted with non-transferable [[Rights issue|rights of use]]. For example, both Amazon and Apple only offer their digital products with single user rights. This means that digital products bought through such services can only be used by the purchaser, and cannot be passed on.<ref>
== Proposed solutions ==
Line 30 ⟶ 31:
=== Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act ===
As a response to the lack of both federal and state laws concerning digital inheritance, in 2015 the [[Uniform Law Commission]] released the ''Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act'' (RUFADAA).<ref>Sy, E. (2016). The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act: Has the law caught up with technology? ''Touro Law Review, 32''(3), 647-678. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/touro32&i=665</ref> This piece of legislation seeks to balance the interests of digital estate administrators and the privacy concerns of internet account users and service providers. The RUFADAA stipulates that a personal representative (estate administrator, [[fiduciary]], or [[Conservatorship|conservator]]) of an online account user has the right to access the user's electronic communications if the user had consented to this disclosure either via an online tool (such as Facebook's Legacy Contact feature or Google's Inactive Account Manager) or in a will. If neither of these forms of user consent are on file, an online service provider's terms of service agreement remains in effect and the provider has the right to deny a fiduciary access to electronic communications.<ref>Ronderos, J. (2017). Is access enough: Addressing inheritability of digital assets using the three-tier system under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. ''Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law, 18''(3), 1031-1066. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/transac18&i=1058</ref> As of 2021, 47 states have enacted the RUFADAA.<ref>
== Benefits of digital inheritance ==
Line 40 ⟶ 41:
=== Digital estate plans ===
One method of ensuring that a digital inheritance is handled legally and comprehensively is to create a digital estate plan. This can be an informal plan or legally incorporated into a will in the form of [[digital will]]. The practical approach to is to keep a regular [[backup]] of digital assets in a secure place and appoint a single person who will postmortem deal with the assets. An up-to-date list of passwords to online accounts would be essential, as well as determining how each online account provider handles data access after a user's death.<ref name=":4" />
===Password managers===
There are several services that securely store passwords, sending them to designated people after a user's death. Some of these send the customer an email from time to time, prompting to confirm that that person is still alive. Failure to respond to multiple emails makes the service provider assume that the person is deceased and they will disclose the passwords as previously requested. A company may require two verifiers who both must confirm the death, as well as providing a death certificate, before any passwords will be disclosed.<ref name="Duffy20122">
===Digital inheritance services===
There are services that facilitate passing social accounts and digital cryptocurrencies to the beneficiaries after one's passing. They allow users to connect their social accounts, file storage services, and bitcoin wallets to one "vault". The upside of such an approach is that no additional transfer of assets is necessary since transfer is happening on the connected service provider's side, thus keeping risks to the minimum.<ref>
=== Social media===
Social media services have policies and processes to confirm the identity and death of a deceased user.
[[Twitter]] does not allow access to deceased user profiles. They will, however, deactivate an account for someone who is "authorized to act on the behalf of the estate, or with a verified immediate family member of the deceased" provides the user's death certificate and their own [[Identity document|government-issued ID]].<ref>
It is [[Facebook]]'s policy to automatically memorialize a profile if they are made a aware of a user's death. Only verified immediate family members of the deceased may request that the account be fully deleted.<ref name=":3">
Both Facebook and Twitter have been prey to hoax celebrity death announcements and memorial pages, as well as being entangled in legal battles for the rights to access a departed loved one's social profiles,<ref>
[[Google]]'s tool for navigating user death is the Inactive Account Manager. Using this feature, a user can specify a trusted contact that will receive a notification if the user's account has been inactive for a specified amount of time. The user can also decide which data they would like their trusted contact to receive download access to.<ref>
[[Apple Inc.|Apple]] users can add a legacy contact to their Apple ID (this is a new feature included with iOS 15.2, iPadOS 15.2, and macOS 12.1).<ref>
[[LinkedIn]] has a process for removing or memorializing the profiles of deceased members. The request may be initiated by someone with legal authority to act on behalf of the deceased and who has the proper documentation. Non-authorized individuals may simply report a user as deceased.<ref>
==Memorials==
A [[digital estate memorial]] employs a combination of digital technology,<ref>
== See also ==
| |||