Digital inheritance: Difference between revisions

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{{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.

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==Digital estate and digital assets==

{{main|Digital assets}}

The term ''digital estate'' refers to the inheritable digital assets included in a person’sperson's estate. This must includeincludes the digital media itself as well as the rights to have control over that media.<ref name=":1">Ferrante, R. E. (2013). The relationship between digital assets and their transference at death: It's complicated. ''Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law, 15''(1)'','' 37-62. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/loyjpubil15&i=47</ref> A person’sperson's digital assets may be digital media that a person owns outright or has the rights to use according to a terms of service agreement. Assets may be stored either online or offline and include online accounts, any form of writing, images and other created static or dynamic content, or any digital content that has economic value. They may include sensitive information, such as banking and medical records, or shared information, such as social media contacts or forums. In contrast with physical assets, digital assets, particularly those stored online, are always vulnerable to change or deletion.<ref name=":0" />

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>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=2010-09-13 |title=Appeals Court Destroys First Sale; You Don't Own Your Software Anymore |url=https://www.techdirt.com/2010/09/13/appeals-court-destroys-first-sale-you-dont-own-your-software-anymore/ |access-date=2023-08-08 |website=Techdirt |language=en-US}}</ref> Second, the heir or administrator of an estate must be able to access the content. This sometimes means navigating any online contracts or service providers’providers' terms of service agreements regarding their policies on user privacy and user death.<ref name=":1" /><ref name="Moneywise2">{{Cite web |date=2015-04-02 |title=Leaving a digital legacy {{!}} Moneywise |url=http://www.moneywise.co.uk/cut-your-costs/family-life/leaving-digital-legacy |access-date=2023-08-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402152830/http://www.moneywise.co.uk/cut-your-costs/family-life/leaving-digital-legacy |archive-date=2015-04-02 }}</ref>

== Obstacles to digital inheritance ==

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== Proposed solutions ==

Many solutions to the obstacles faced by digital inheritance have been proposed. One possible solution in the United States calls for a revision to the SCA allowing an exemption for digital estate beneficiaries. This would create less liability for online service providers and allow them to grant a beneficiary access to a deceased user's account as an authorized third party.<ref name=":2" /> Another possible solution would be an entirely new federal law regulating the handling of digital assets after death, in which the designated administrator of an estate would receive full access to the deceased user's online accounts.<ref name=":1" /> As estate law has traditionally been relegated to states, however, a proposed federal law would be a significant departure from current practice.<ref name=":2" /> A third possible solution proposes that online service providers present users with a list of options upon sign-up regarding the disposition of the user's content in case of death. This option would allow users to choose whether or not they desire their content to be preserved and to whom they would grant access, accommodating their right to privacy.<ref>Sherry, K. (2012). What happens to our Facebook accounts when we die?: Probate versus policy and the fate of social-media assets postmortem. ''Pepperdine Law Review, 40''(1), 185-250. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/pepplr40&i=193</ref>

=== Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act ===

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=== 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===

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===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>{{cite web |title=Digital Inheritance {{!}} OUCH! Newsletter January 2020 {{!}} SANS Security Awareness |url=https://www.sans.org/newsletters/ouch/digital-inheritance/ |access-date=2023-08-08 |website=www.sans.org}}</ref>

Zephorum.com for example is an online platform that gives for the first time the chance to indicate and observe a users will, both while alive and post-mortem. Zephorum is an online ecosystem that takes care of the digital estate, can recover data from deceased users, and allows the heirs to manage their digital inheritance by using a webetery (web+cemetery) where people commemorative profiles can be visited and celebrated. Zephorum goal is to democratize the digital estate process and the online commemoration, all in one platform. It has created two main products, respectively called Urn and Mausoleum, which will enclose the entire digital existence of a deceased. As after death, in the real world, the heirs dispose of the physical body of the deceased by choosing how to keep it for eternity, in the same way, Zephorum gives back unity to the online existence of the person. How? By helping the heirs to carry out, at their request, an operation of downloading and removing data from providers (social networks, email and cloud) to which the deceased was registered. Then, the service encloses the data in a new digital product, usable exclusively privately (Urn) or publicly (Mausoleum).

=== Social media===