{"id":16726,"date":"2012-09-01T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T05:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16726"},"modified":"2012-09-03T10:51:44","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T15:51:44","slug":"digital-inheritance-law-has-not-caught-up-to-our-online-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/09\/01\/digital-inheritance-law-has-not-caught-up-to-our-online-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital &#8220;inheritance&#8221;: law has not caught up to our online lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned in a <a href=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/08\/30\/21st-century-problems-who-inherits-your-digital-property\/\" target=\"_blank\">post<\/a> the other day, our laws are still designed for a world where most things have a physical presence, and the problems we see in intellectual property and patent law are just the start of the turmoil our <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10000872396390443713704577601524091363102.html?mod=e2tw\" target=\"_blank\">legal system will have to face<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What will happen to your Facebook account after you are gone?<\/p>\n<p>Dealing with digital assets after someone dies is becoming a challenge for families and the legal system alike.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers are trying to clarify rules governing the passage of social-media and email accounts, along with other online assets that might have financial value. Several states have enacted laws to deal with post-death access to digital assets, and several more are working on similar legislation, says Gene Hennig, a lawyer at Gray Plant Mooty in Minneapolis and a commissioner of the Uniform Law Commission.<\/p>\n<p>That group, which recommends uniform state laws, plans to come up with a recommended statute that more states could adopt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Eventually people are going to start putting in their wills what they want, and we need to know what&#8217;s allowed,&#8221; Mr. Hennig says. &#8220;In the olden days, grandma had a chest in the attic full of photo albums. Now, your chest of photos is in your computer.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><b>Update, 3 September<\/b>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2012\/09\/03\/bruce_willis_in_itunes_will_spat\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bruce Willis<\/a> wants his kids to inherit the music library he&#8217;s built up, but the iTunes licensing won&#8217;t let him do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned in a post the other day, our laws are still designed for a world where most things have a physical presence, and the problems we see in intellectual property and patent law are just the start of the turmoil our legal system will have to face: What will happen to your Facebook [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28,15],"tags":[391,241,58,593],"class_list":["post-16726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-media","category-technology","tag-facebook","tag-intellectualproperty","tag-internet","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4lM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16726"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16754,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16726\/revisions\/16754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}