Unless medical science has a solution up their collective sleeves, we’re all going to die (eventually). It may be an individual shock, but humans have been dying forever — it’s the unwelcome end of the trip. As a result, we’ve evolved ways to redistribute the property of deceased members of our families and communities. When the issues were as simple as who got Uncle Grog’s club and who got his loincloth, we came up with solutions.
Fast forward to our becoming-ever-more-digital age, and not all of our property is tangible: we’re becoming “owners” of digital property that may be as valuable as our physical possessions. What happens to our music libraries, e-book collections, social media accounts, and all the other non-physical things we’ve bought and used during our lives?
Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.
And one’s heirs stand to lose huge sums of money. “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family would be OK with losing a collection of 10,000 books and songs,” says Evan Carroll, co-author of “Your Digital Afterlife.” “Legally dividing one account among several heirs would also be extremely difficult.”
Part of the problem is that with digital content, one doesn’t have the same rights as with print books and CDs. Customers own a license to use the digital files — but they don’t actually own them.
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Most digital content exists in a legal black hole. “The law is light years away from catching up with the types of assets we have in the 21st Century,” says Wheatley-Liss. In recent years, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Indiana, Oklahoma and Idaho passed laws to allow executors and relatives access to email and social networking accounts of those who’ve died, but the regulations don’t cover digital files purchased.
Apple and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.
