A number of technological systems , sometimes known as "digital wills" are appearing on the market to help people bequeath digital assets such as passwords, emails, virtual game assets etc. Do these help provide a legal solution? Or do they merely confuse further a landscape alreqdy lacking good practice?
Erasing you Digital Footprint - Using Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital ...gallowayandcollens
Could someone else, acting on your behalf, gain access to your digital assets? What if the person was deceased? Would you want them to be able to? Access to Digital Assets would be challenging, if not impossible, without a Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets law. Now that Michigan has enacted this Act, how will it effect your estate planning?
Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets: What You Need to Knowgallowayandcollens
Recent updates to Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets. We use email, social media, and online banking every day. it is important to properly plan for those digital assets in the event of incapacity and after death.
E-Discovery: How do Litigation Hold, BYOD, and Privacy Affect You? - Course T...Cengage Learning
E-Discovery: How do Litigation Hold, BYOD, and Privacy Affect You? - Course Technology Computing Conference
Presenter: Amelia Phillips, Highline Community College
E-discovery is defined as “gathering electronically stored information (ESI) for use in litigation”. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward statement, but upon further examination one finds that it encompasses a broad range of items. Over 90% of documents produced by companies now are electronic. Older paper files have been converted to microfiche or PDF files. Add to this email, text messages, social media (yes, even the IRS has a Facebook page) and you have an idea of the amount of information that becomes this new term called “Big Data”. Terabytes of data will soon become petabytes of data. Are we ready? Are our students prepared for this new era? E-Discovery is a field that affects not only the lawyers, but the IT support staff, and how companies do business. In this talk you will be introduced to some of the new technology in the field such as predictive coding, forensic linguistics, and social media archiving. You will also be shown some of the new tools on the market that you can use in your classrooms to prepare your students and yourself for this fast evolving arena. What does a company need to do when a litigation hold is in place? What response needs to come from the legal staff, the IT support staff, the managers, and the average employee? How does this affect the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies? Which comes first - employee privacy, freedom of information or corporate security? You will walk away from this talk with a methodology to incorporate this new topic into your curriculum. You will also be given ideas of how to make this affordable for your labs, what foundations your students need, and how to deliver this in a way that appeals to the business, IT or legal oriented student. This topic affects them all. Come and find out why this is something they need to be successful in tomorrow's market.
Erasing you Digital Footprint - Using Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital ...gallowayandcollens
Could someone else, acting on your behalf, gain access to your digital assets? What if the person was deceased? Would you want them to be able to? Access to Digital Assets would be challenging, if not impossible, without a Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets law. Now that Michigan has enacted this Act, how will it effect your estate planning?
Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets: What You Need to Knowgallowayandcollens
Recent updates to Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets. We use email, social media, and online banking every day. it is important to properly plan for those digital assets in the event of incapacity and after death.
E-Discovery: How do Litigation Hold, BYOD, and Privacy Affect You? - Course T...Cengage Learning
E-Discovery: How do Litigation Hold, BYOD, and Privacy Affect You? - Course Technology Computing Conference
Presenter: Amelia Phillips, Highline Community College
E-discovery is defined as “gathering electronically stored information (ESI) for use in litigation”. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward statement, but upon further examination one finds that it encompasses a broad range of items. Over 90% of documents produced by companies now are electronic. Older paper files have been converted to microfiche or PDF files. Add to this email, text messages, social media (yes, even the IRS has a Facebook page) and you have an idea of the amount of information that becomes this new term called “Big Data”. Terabytes of data will soon become petabytes of data. Are we ready? Are our students prepared for this new era? E-Discovery is a field that affects not only the lawyers, but the IT support staff, and how companies do business. In this talk you will be introduced to some of the new technology in the field such as predictive coding, forensic linguistics, and social media archiving. You will also be shown some of the new tools on the market that you can use in your classrooms to prepare your students and yourself for this fast evolving arena. What does a company need to do when a litigation hold is in place? What response needs to come from the legal staff, the IT support staff, the managers, and the average employee? How does this affect the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies? Which comes first - employee privacy, freedom of information or corporate security? You will walk away from this talk with a methodology to incorporate this new topic into your curriculum. You will also be given ideas of how to make this affordable for your labs, what foundations your students need, and how to deliver this in a way that appeals to the business, IT or legal oriented student. This topic affects them all. Come and find out why this is something they need to be successful in tomorrow's market.
This session explores the concept of identity in today's digital era and what that means to an individual's health, as well as to society's treatment of the individual, including genetic discrimination and universal access to and affordability of medical technology advancements.
The Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in Michigan: Now That We Have it, ...gallowayandcollens
Attorney Howard H. Collens presents the most recent updates on the new Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Learn the many states that have recently enacted the new Act and updates on what the future holds for estate planning and digital assets.
The Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in Michigan:Now That We Have it, W...gallowayandcollens
Attorney Howard Collens presented the most recent updates on Michigan’s new Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Now is the perfect time to update your will, trust and power of attorney to incorporate the latest options for dealing with your digital assets.
The Social Capital Effects: Resources, Tie Strength, & Digital Divides Wenhong Chen
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Self Help Legal Software and Unauthorized Practice of LawRichard S. Granat
Presentation by Richard Granat and Marc Lauritsen to Legal Services Corporation annual conference on legal technology. Topic is how UPL rules apply to legal selfhelp software.
Health Data Encryption: The Seven Principals of PrivacyCompliancy Group
To view other past webinars or to register for upcoming FREE HIPAA educational webinars please visit www.compliancy-group.com/webinars.
To Try The Guard or compliance tracking solution The Guard risk free please visit www.compliancy-group.com
Probably all the major software manufacturers are exploring the use of intelligent agents. Myths, promises, and reality are all colliding. But the main difficulties I foresee are social, not technical: How will intelligent agents interact with people and perhaps more important, how might people think about agents?
The new crop of "intelligent agents" are different from the automated devices of earlier eras because of their computational power:
They take over human tasks, and they interact with people in human-like ways, perhaps with a form of natural language.
Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how this unique, emergent form of evidence can be used for criminal investigations and civil litigation e-discovery.
2. Discover the DoJ memo to law enforcement uncovered by FOIA stressing why and how to use social media in criminal cases.
3. See social media evidence recovered from smart phones, personal computers, and the cloud.
4. Learn the ethics of social media evidence collection including what you can and cannot do, if you want to keep your license that is.
This session explores the concept of identity in today's digital era and what that means to an individual's health, as well as to society's treatment of the individual, including genetic discrimination and universal access to and affordability of medical technology advancements.
The Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in Michigan: Now That We Have it, ...gallowayandcollens
Attorney Howard H. Collens presents the most recent updates on the new Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Learn the many states that have recently enacted the new Act and updates on what the future holds for estate planning and digital assets.
The Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in Michigan:Now That We Have it, W...gallowayandcollens
Attorney Howard Collens presented the most recent updates on Michigan’s new Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Now is the perfect time to update your will, trust and power of attorney to incorporate the latest options for dealing with your digital assets.
The Social Capital Effects: Resources, Tie Strength, & Digital Divides Wenhong Chen
More than 20 percent of Americans still have no access to the Internet. How to get them connected is critical to narrowing the digital divides. Drawing on a two-wave national panel dataset, this paper examines the implications of social capital for Internet access and use. Results demonstrate social capital facilitates Internet access and use. In particularly, resource-rich bonding social capital helps overcome the digital divides both in access, general use, and online communication. Before the Internet can revitalize social capital, there must be the right social capital in place to close the digital divides. Highlighting the effect of social connectivity on digital connectivity, the findings have important implications for policymakers and practitioners.
Self Help Legal Software and Unauthorized Practice of LawRichard S. Granat
Presentation by Richard Granat and Marc Lauritsen to Legal Services Corporation annual conference on legal technology. Topic is how UPL rules apply to legal selfhelp software.
Health Data Encryption: The Seven Principals of PrivacyCompliancy Group
To view other past webinars or to register for upcoming FREE HIPAA educational webinars please visit www.compliancy-group.com/webinars.
To Try The Guard or compliance tracking solution The Guard risk free please visit www.compliancy-group.com
Probably all the major software manufacturers are exploring the use of intelligent agents. Myths, promises, and reality are all colliding. But the main difficulties I foresee are social, not technical: How will intelligent agents interact with people and perhaps more important, how might people think about agents?
The new crop of "intelligent agents" are different from the automated devices of earlier eras because of their computational power:
They take over human tasks, and they interact with people in human-like ways, perhaps with a form of natural language.
Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how this unique, emergent form of evidence can be used for criminal investigations and civil litigation e-discovery.
2. Discover the DoJ memo to law enforcement uncovered by FOIA stressing why and how to use social media in criminal cases.
3. See social media evidence recovered from smart phones, personal computers, and the cloud.
4. Learn the ethics of social media evidence collection including what you can and cannot do, if you want to keep your license that is.
Web analytics is measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purpose of understanding web usage. Web analytics not only used as tool to measure web traffic but can also be used as tool for business and market research and to assess and improve effectiveness of website
Google analytics is the free analytics tool used to which provides statistics for website. It helps to analyze the web traffic as well as different user interactions.
This report features world capital market performance and a timeline of events for the past quarter. It begins with a global overview, then features the returns of stock and bond asset classes in the US and international markets.
Getting Actionable Insights From Tracking Users in EcommerceAndraz Stalec
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We will unravel the layers of consumer decision journey, define micro conversions to track and locate the best insights. It’s not all theory – we will discuss practical application of the See-Think-Do model to ecommerce websites. Who your customers are and what they think about you is something you can’t ignore. That’s why we’ll also focus on tracking different personas, evaluating your content and tracking your NetPromotor Score in GA. Why to do it, how to do it and what outcomes to expect.
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Maximizing Your Amazon Product Discoverability Via Content OptimizationTinuiti
Tune in as Pat Petriello, Former member of the Amazon Seller Services Team, dives into actionable steps you can take to improve your content & convert more consumers.
This is a Quarterly Business Review Template to be used by Customer Success Management organizations.
One of the most important activities your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) will perform is the Quarterly Business Review (QBR).
QBRs are sometimes known by different names – Business Reviews or Executive Business Reviews – but no matter what they’re called, they’re incredibly important and the agenda and flow are largely going to fall on the CSM, so it’s critical to help them prepare for, and perform QBRs, the right way.
The most successful Enterprise SaaS companies know that growing revenue only through new customer acquisition is the less efficient way to scale. Rather, they understand that growing revenue within your existing customer base - through up-sells, cross-sells, and expanded use - is the most profitable way to scale.
In fact, Enterprise SaaS companies that grow revenue - and company valuation - by expanding revenue within their existing customer base also know the key to making this work is to focus on - and operationalize - Customer Success.
Use this Quarterly Business Review template to help engage your customer in a meaningful dialogue about their success using your product. Specifically designed for SaaS providers, this QBR template has all the slides you need to summarize your customer's use of your product and tie that back to their overall goals. The template is easily customized and has everything you need from the agenda to goal setting, outstanding items, tracking against metrics, health scores, activity scores and even NPS scores.
A look at the evolution of analytics and its revolutionary potential to transform ordinary businesses, power new business models, enable innovation, and deliver greater value. http://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/deloitte-analytics/articles/analytics-trends.html
Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in Michigan - Social Mitten 2018gallowayandcollens
The majority of our lives and assets are managed online, from online banking to blogs and many other social media outlets. In today's world, it makes sense to incorporate your digital assets into your estate plan.
Attorney Howard H. Collens presents the newest updates for the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act.
Digital Assets: A Path To Fiduciary AccessHoward Collens
Presented at State Bar of Michigan Elder Law and Disability Rights Section 2014 Fall Conference. Explores Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets, the Uniform Law Commission FADA, and Michigan's legislative changes to the Probate law.
Forging Self-Sovereign Identity in the Age of the Blockchain - Christopher Al...Christopher Allen
Presentation by Christopher Allen of Blockstream on self-sovereign decentralized identity, confidentiality, privacy, and human rights at Milan Bitcoin Meetup on April 11, 2017. Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0-oXpp6yrM&t=5m7s
Considering how much information we keep on computers and on the internet, estate planning just isn’t complete anymore without including digital assets and social media accounts.
This presentation was provided by Virginia Dressler and Cynthia Kristof, both of Kent State, during the NISO virtual conference, Information Freedom, Ethics, and Integrity, held on Wednesday, April 18, 2018.
Digital Natives? Basics of Information LiteracySarah Uthoff
Presentation takes you through what it means to be a native, if there really are digital natives and then turns to information literacy covering a few specific areas such as passwords, digital will, and some impressive tricks to gain you some credibility with any want to be natives.
Ostreon is at the forefront of addressing the digital legacy challenge. The platform envisions a future where individuals can seamlessly pass on their digital assets, ensuring a smooth transition for their loved ones.
This is an update of my previous presentation from 2012. I discuss several recent topics including the Witnesses Principle, the rise of Big Metadata, and the need for autonomy and possibly self-awareness for financial instruments designed to hold value for periods greater than a single human lifetime.
Global Governance of Generative AI: The Right Way ForwardLilian Edwards
AI regulation has been a hot topic since the rise of machine learning (ML) in the “big data” era, but generative AI or “foundation models” tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E 2(now 3) and CoPilot, ike ML before them, may create serious societal risks, including embedding and outputting bias; generating fake news, illegal or harmful content and inadvertent “hallucinations”; infringing existing laws relating eg to copyright and privacy; as well as environmental, competition and workplace concerns.
Many nations are now considering regulation to address these worries, and can draw on a number of basic and hybrid models of governance. This paper canvasses models of mandatory comprehensive legislation (where the EU AI Act hopes to place itself as a gold standard model); vertical mandatory legislation (where China has quietly taken a lead); adapting existing law (see the many copyright lawsuits underway); and voluntary “soft law” such as codes of ethics, “blueprints”, or industry guidelines. Both the domestic and international regulatory scenes for AI are also increasingly politicised as the rise of "AI safety" hype shows. Against this backdrop what choices should smaller countries such as the UK and Australia make? will international harmonisation lead to a race to the top as with the GDPR, or the bottom - rule by tech for tech?
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This talk looks at
(a) the progress in regulating GPAI, renamed foundation models, by the EU AI Act as the EU parliament reaches a final text in May 2023
(b) what other laws exist to regulate generative AI meanwhile , notably copyright and the GDPR (latter dealt with in detail here https://www.slideshare.net/lilianed/can-chatgpt-be-compatible-with-the-gdpr-discuss )
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Since the Italian Garantie became the first DP authority in the world to even temporarily ban ChatGPT, debate has broken out as to whether generative AI models can comply with data protection laws, not just in the GDPR but around the world. The use of personal data for training requires a legal basis which is hard to find, special category data raises special problems (duh) and the model itself may be considered personal data due to inversion attacks and data leakage in outputs. Hallucination presents seemingly insuperable problems as to accuracy and rectification. Even though Open AI have temporarily satisfied the Garantie, further disputes still seem likely to eventually reach the courts. In this talk I will attempt to throw the entirety of DP law against the wall of large language and image models and even, jut for fun, raise the spectre of whether AI models can libel
Brief summary of how the law and legal practice may be affected by the ris of AI and autonomous cars, robots, etc - with a look at what harms or biases may result and how law and the market might try to solve those problems.
If the UK leaves the EU and EEA, will it be "adequate" for data transfers from the EU? Evidemnce suggests not, especially following the passing of the IP Act and the Tele2/Watson CJEU decision.
Updated vesion of my talk from 2013 as given in March 2016.
Coves the basics of why algorithmic governance may be problematic for users and society and suggests some legal remedies for these problems including competition law and defamation law.
Privacy, the Internet of Things and Smart Cities Lilian Edwards
Updated version of my paper, delivered Florence spring 2016. How can we obtain consent to sharing of personal data in a ubiquitous/ioT environment? is it possible given the requeirements of the GDPR and E-Privacy Directive?
From Privacy Impact Assessment to Social Impact Assessment: Preserving TRrus...Lilian Edwards
Short paper by Laurence Diver and myself on why the IoT is a special problem for privacy and how we can and should try to build such systems using Privacy by Design
UK copyright, online intermediaries and enforcementLilian Edwards
What evidence do judges take into acount when they decide to block websites to prevent copyright infringement? Using case reports of s 97A CPDA cases in the UK, this paper shows a number of problems with judicial use of empirical evidnece especially as to whether blocking is effective.
Be careful what you wish for! How the GDPR even now it has been finalised may not solve the key problems of rthe tech community of what is personal data and what is anonymised/pseudonymous.
Can privacy survive the onslaught of online standard form "consent"; big data; and the Internet of Things? This paper wonders, and considers in particular the challenges of privacy and smart cities, which combine all three issues.
An iterative update on my ongoing work on revenge porn and how to deal with it. This talk analyses recent legislation and Google's recent decision to extend the "right to be forgotten" to revenge porn and argues both forgiving (restorative justice) and forgetting (RTBF) may be more useful remedies than the crimainal law alone for victims.
the music industry has many problems, and , some would say, enemies. THis talk looks at some of these and summarises the outcomes to date of the "war on piracy". It also however foresees a newer threat - the algorithmic curation and , perhaps, creation, of popular music. Do we need new music and human musicians any more?
A brief account of the current state of EU data protection laws accompanied by the suggestion they face almost insuperable challenge from the combination of the illusory nature of consent in most online contracts; the rise of big data as a "treasure hunt"; and the rise oambient environments for data colelction (the "Internet of Things") where design imperatives push towards an absence of opportunities for informed specific consent.
Police surveillance of social media - do you have a reasonable expectation of...Lilian Edwards
This paper (co-authored with lachlan Urquart of U of Nottingham) discusses if we have any expectations of privacy in content we make public on;line on social media - or can such content be data mined by the police at will? Should any kind of surveillance warrant be required of the police to use such material? has social jmedia become the new panopticon?
IT law : the middle kingdom between east and WestLilian Edwards
Privacy as a value is often as conflicting with and less important than other major societal goals such as nation state secureity and business profits. China as a socialist state emerging a a major digital economuic force may fall prey to both these assumptions. However the recent history in the West shows that over zealous national secueity infringing citizen privacy, as revealed in the recent Snowden PRISM/TEMPORA etc scandals, may backlash against business profits as well as reducing citizen trust in security.China can learn from these lessons as it expands its own privacy law especially in the IT/telecoms area.
What do we do with aproblem like revenge porn ?Lilian Edwards
Revenge porn is a vile and growing phenomenon. Thuis talk discusses its origins and gendered nature, what UK criminal law applies to stop it, and what other solutions there might be eg faster take down by socuial networks, the "right to be forgotten"
Algorithms are taking control of our information rich world. As the twin sibling to Big Data, increasingly they decide how society views us via constructed profiles (as criminals? as terrorists? as rich or poor consumers?); what we see as important, newsworthy, cool or profitable (eg Twitter trending topics, automated stock selling, Amazon recommendations, BBC website top news topics etc); and indeed what we see at all as algorithms are increasingly used to filter our illegal or undesirable content as tools of public policy. Algorithms are peceived by virtue of their automation as neutral, objective and fair, unlike human decision makers - yet evidence increasingly shows the opposite - eg a series of legal complaints assert that Google games its own search results to promote its own economic interests and demote those of competitors or annoyances; while in the defamation field, French, German and Italian courts have decided that algorithmically generated autosuggests in search can be libellous (eg "Bettina Wolf prostitute"). . This paper asks if any legal remedies do or should exist to *audit* proprietary algorithms , given their importance, and asks if one way forward might be via existing and future subject access rights to personal data in EU data protection law. The transformation of these rights as proposed in the draft Data Protection Regulation is not however hopeful.
Robots are no longer creatures of science fiction nor even restricted to industrial and warfare contexts but moving into sensitive domnestic worlds such as homes, hospitals and schools. How will laws about liability, privacy, evidence etc apply in this brave new world? How do we avoid creating kneejerk moral panic laws which may restrict the vaule of robotics to society?
1. Technologies for bequeathing
digital assets: help or hindrance?
Lilian Edwards
Professor of E-Governance
University of Strathclyde
and
Edina Harbinja, PhD
candidate,
University of Strathclyde
CDAS
Conference, Bath, June
2012
2. Types of digital assets bequeathed?
• SNS/Facebook profiles
• Blog site posts -
literary/cultural heritage?
• Photos eg Flickr – value plus
sentimental appeal
• Ebay IDs and reputations,
• Domain names –> entire
online businesses
• Emails eg Gmail – all of above
plus access to deceased’s
network
• Digital music, films, e-bks
from iTunes, Amazon etc
• MMORPGS eg WoW –
account, virtual currency, assets
and avatar
• Online assets eg PayPal
accounts
3. Observations
• Such assets primarily associated with the young, but no longer the
case.. ?
• 53% of UK population between 65-74 years, and 25% of 75 and
more year olds used the Internet in 2011 (Ofcom 2011)
• Use of social networks and ICT increasingly associated with better
quality of life for older/senior people
• The over 55s value their DAs more highly than other age group (The
Dying in a Digital Age study, 2011) with 83 per cent saying they have
strong sentimental value and 89 per cent financial value
• “Saving money, keeping in touch and reducing feelings of isolation
are just a few examples of how the internet can change lives for the
better.” Martha Lane Fox , digital inclusion supremo
• Nearly 7 m over 55s in UK still not online (April 2012) -> Public
drives to increase inclusion e.g. Silver Surfers Week 2001-2012 –
also saves govt money e.g. e-governance, welfare, taxes etc online.
• But little advice on how to deal with digital assets in wills. And
intestacy is the norm: more than 1/3 over 55s have not yet made a
will (Guardian, 2010). 54% died in 2009 without a will.
4. Legal problems around wills and digital
assets
• Legal issues:
– Are these assets property? Can they be bequeathed? Who owns them?
– What is role of intermediaries who control access and possibly ownership via
contract, e.g. Facebook, eBay, Spotify, Google?
– Conflicts of law? Succession/ probate law is heavily local while DA s likely to be
hosted almost anywhere – controlled by what legal system?
– Good practice and experience among solicitors in UK at very early stage
– No specific legislation in UK as in Oklahoma, Ohio, Nevada etc. (7 US states so
far)
• Practical issues:
– Getting access to assets may be under control of intermediary and determined
by procedures which do not map to local laws, e.g. order of “heirs” on
Facebook’s form
– No consistency re how sites treat assets after death; e.g. Yahoo! Policy forbids
transfers to heirs after death (US marine case); FB allow memorialisation but
not transfer; Spotify did not allow deletion of playlists.
– Best advise often to staple passwords to will, but usually transfer banned by
terms and conditions -> possible termination a/c?
• Are digital wills – “technologies for bequeathing” - the solution??
5. Solutions? “Digital will” /“trust”/ digital
executors / password locker sites
• Different business models:
― “digital wills”
• Legacy locker - “the safe and secure way to pass access to your online accounts to
friends and loved ones”; “a digital safety deposit box” (In the event that someone
submits a name as recently deceased, contacts all of his listed verifiers to confirm
that the assets should be released and passed to nominated beneficiaries), also
document backup and legacy letters
• Asset lock – “Secure electronic safe deposit box”; once a minimum number (set by a
user) of recipients sign in and confirm death, the account will be unlocked after a
time delay (which can be set by a person). The information and instructions saved
will be sent to the family and friends (docs copies, final
wishes, letters, instructions, secret info etc.)
― “digital asset trusts” – e.g. LifeEnsured, appointed as a successor trustee for assets listed
in the trust doc (avoiding formalities of probate), “Irrevocable Trust Fund” - to carry out
the post-death management of the on-line accounts, if financially unable to provide
account management services
6. ― email services, video messages, legacy websites etc.
• Death switch – system prompts a password at a regular schedule to make sure a
person is alive, if no answer, supposes death or critical disablity and pre-scripted
message automatically emailed to those named by the person
• If i die – Facebook application, leaving messages to facebook friends on death, min
3 trustees to confirm death
• BCelebrated - autobiographical legacy website, offers personalised memorial
websites, protected private messages and emails, activated by chosen activators
• DeadSoci.al – extending social network profiles (Twitter, Google + and Facebook)
after death, enables scheduling of messages that are distributed post-mortem
― offline and online services combined, e.g. digital executors (to try make it legally
binding)
• Entrustet – account guardian (transfers accounts to heirs), account incinerator
(deletes all accounts listed), lawyers directory (finds digital estate planning
attorneys)
• My Digital Executor (UK) – involving 2 solicitors who keep email
accounts, passwords and list of digital assets, assets transferred in the form of
codicil
• Final Fling (UK) - advice on living an dying well
(funerals, celebrations, bereavement, treasure trove, wills, advance decision, safe
deposit box and essential documents; wills printed out, signed and witnessed)
12. Possible benefits
• In the absence of wills, people could easier express their wishes re e.g.
funerals, letters, memories etc. (no formalities required like for wills), but note
possible conflicts with the law of intestacy if property involved
• Where wills exist, easier to update accounts, passwords, letters, etc. via these
services, than changing the will with all the formalities required (again caution if
property involved)
• Socialising and advising functions - encouraging people to think ahead, talk openly
about death and dying; discuss and share views with members of communities;
offer useful advice on funerals, celebrations, bereavement, wills, advance
decisions, safe deposit boxes and essential documents
• Some combine offline and online services, such as making of a will and codicil, thus
mitigating “non-binding effect”
• Rising awareness of the “digital assets inventory”, people usually disregard and
underestimate (but 2011 study: UK's digital music collections worth more than
£900 million, 45 per cent of people having digital music collections - value it at over
£100 and 10 per cent at over £1,000)
• Perhaps the use of storage capacities of these services, without the actual transfer
of DA outside probate? – to make probate easier?
13. Drawbacks / problems
• “Ownership of any electronic rights related to the internet such as intellectual
property, domain names, or marketing affiliation agreements, cannot be granted or
transferred through Legacy Locker.”; ”not a legal substitute for a Will, Trust, or Power of
Attorney”; “not legally binding” – if digital assets are defined as property or other right, than
what could be transferred through it? need for probate?
• Death Switch: “These Terms of Use and your use of the website shall be governed by the laws
of the United States and the State of Texas without regard to its conflicts of laws
principles.”, Bcelebrated – the laws of state of California, without the effect of choice of law;
if i die - Israel jurisdiction – jurisdictional issues, services useful only for citizens of that
particular state? Some do not recommend using it out of the US (LifeEnsured)
• Conflicts with terms of services of SNSs, other accounts and services (often non-
transferrable after death)
• Publicity of the will – these services not public, but making accounts and passwords public?
• Extension of our digital personalities – e.g. DeadSocial, privacy risks? Post-mortem profiles
deserve post-mortem protection of privacy?
• Security breaches and identity thefts (are security measures employed adequate?)
• Unstable market? Viable companies offering these services? Overstated their abilities? (see
Beyer and Griffin, Estate planning for digital assets, July 2011), thus not “reliable and
permanent" form of evidence of testamentary intent (Langbein, 1975)
• Digital Assets Trust as a better solution? Jurisdiction issue (civil law countries)?
14. Post mortem privacy
• Specific issue not yet addressed: we allow people to control their property after
death but not generally their privacy or reputation: in UK the dead have no rights in
libel nor in data protection/ breach of confidence).cf Yahoo! US Marine case.
• Conflicts?: “Shame on Yahoo for not allowing this family to have access to their
deceased son's e-mail. As a mother and wife I can only imagine the grief the family is
feeling at a time like this. All the family wants is a small token of their son to hold on
to. I would want everything and anything that I could have also. I can understand
Yahoo's privacy policy concerning passwords, but there should be a way for families
to retrieve e-mails.” But what if he was e.g. gay?
• Ask SNSs and other platforms to adopt practices to make bequeathing digital assets
easier e.g. allow transfer passwords; allow nomination of “digital executor”.
• Extend data protection (and other?) rights to protect the personal data of the
deceased. Transmit to heir? Lasting how long? Denmark, Estonia (30 years only)
have DP rights after death; France privacy rights; Sweden “confidentiality”. DP
Regulation reform does not harmonise. But do we want to recognise a right of post
mortem privacy?
• Draft DP Reg does suggest right of interoperability for user personal data – could
help? Mirrors/archives? Also right to forget – extend to will requests by the dead?
• But such measures require foresight – cf prevalence of intestacy.
15. Thank you
lilian.edwards@strath.ac.uk
@lilianedwards
e.harbinja@strath.ac.uk
@EdinaRl
Editor's Notes
Cf Wordswoth’s love lettersTwitter 10 commandments
Procedure inc confirmation etc should go by court where sought – depends on situs of asset? Or last domicile of deceased?The Dying in a Digital Age 2011 Study, commissioned by Remember A Charity, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8415771/Digital-legacies-lost-as-people-omit-passwords-from-wills.html
Launched April 2009. Problem doesn't take a/c of the law – merely what the deceased said to do. A/c might be drained by wrong person being given passw to ebay a/c or Paypal, say, before rightful heir got there.Launched april 2009Encrypts all user’s passwords etc and he tells them who to send them to on death.Court order?No effect because they don’t have control over it once encrypted.Would have to seek ct order eg against g/f if law said wife was to inherit all DA s and he had entrusted it to g/f.By which time she could have deleted or copied..?“Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, always alive to the next big thing, may have found a solution. This week, a website called Legacy Locker has launched in the United States. It not only provides a storage space for wills, farewell letters and other such documentation, but also a master list of user names and programs for online bank accounts, social networking sites and document repositories. Subscribers to the service create a list of their online profiles and passwords, be it the log-in details for their computer, banking service or even their iTunes music store account, and nominate a “beneficiary” to receive this information in the event of their untimely demise. It means that their Facebook profile, email address or Twitter account can be disabled after they die, and that nominated relatives can assume ownership of their digital ephemera on their behalf.
Enforcement issues vs SNS etc likely to persist as they have de facto control.