IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2014 - 26
leading edge
CRAIG BELLAMY, MICHAEL ARNOLD,
MARTIN GIBBS, BJORN NANSEN, AND TAMARA KOHN
Consumer Issues for Planning
and Managing Digital Legacies
G
rowing use of software applications in the
home, the workplace, and in public places
has resulted in increased production and
use of personal digital files. These digital
files may take the form of emails sent to colleagues,
photos of family and friends taken on a camera or
smartphone, music downloaded from a number of
different services, or videos taken at weddings or
birthday parties. In this environment of increased data
production and usage, unavoidable questions arise as
to what happens to these files when a person dies.
There is, in general, a lack of understanding about
the rights consumers have over the digital files they buy
or produce that has implications in the context of death.
The purchaser of a physical product such as a book, a
CD, or a DVD has certain "normalized" rights over the
product, such as the right to give the item to another
person. This is termed "the right of first sale." This
allows for gifting, lending libraries, secondary markets
of copyrighted work (such as book stores and secondhand record shops), and for bequeathing a collection of
books or CDs to relatives and friends. However, regarding digital products and services such as eBooks and
music streaming services, a different set of distinct and
separate relationships are in place, and it is not always
clear what the consumer's rights are in the context of
death and the bequeathment of digital items.
Consumers need to be made aware that when they
press the "buy" button on an eBook or music file that
they are not really buying anything at all. The appropriate term is "rent" or "loan" as there is usually no
transfer of property in the transaction, only a limited
right to use. In addition, the delivery methods of digital products are changing rapidly so increasingly there
is no physical copy of the digital products, coupled
with the inherent "right of first sale" licence embedded within the physical copy. The situation is bound
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2014.2353751
Date of publication: 17 September 2014
26
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to become even more convoluted with the increase of
cloud services to deliver entertainment and other software services where there is no transfer of a digital file
or "property" in any meaningful sense of the word from
one party to the other. Thus, the ability to bequeath
something to another person is challenged if it is not
owned in the first place, or if there is no local copy.
The issues of ownership of digital files and their transfer to another person, contractual obligations, and the
maintenance of digital files over time are key issues in
the emerging digital economy. Although it is not possible
to comprehensively explore these debates across all the
industries and services that make up the digital economy
here, what we can do is outline some of the innovative
and practical responses to the management of digital legacies and the key issues that surround them for consumers.
Some of these responses include new services to allow the
download and storage of data locally and then the ability
to request, for instance, that all the data held by the online
services is deleted upon death. Other responses include
"digital lockers" where passwords and important digital
files may be stored and accessed by an Executor of a Will,
friend or relative upon death. Many legal professionals
and estate planners suggests the inclusion of a "digital
registrar" in a will that states the location and passwords
of digital accounts with additional instructions such as
"delete all files" or "create an online memorial."
Digital files of all types now constitute an important
part of our personal and family histories, thus the ability
to transfer them to another person is of vital importance
for the transfer of family heritage from one generation to
the next. The loss (or at least changing nature) of certain
property rights within the digital economy impede the
ability to transfer some copyrighted material to others,
thus consumers need to be aware of this and create strategies to prevent their important digital legacies being
lost through non-transferability. Companies within the
digital economy also need to make consumers aware of
(continued on page 31)
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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fALL 2014
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