engleski

Digital inheritance

In the past, photos, documents, receipts, bills, music, movies etc. were tangible or were fixed on a tangible media such as CDs or DVD's. After a person died, it was usually enough to go through his/her house or office and find all of these items. Some of them were valuable, others were not, but all of them constituted inheritance. Today, for the most part, these items are digitized and stored on computers, smartphones, flash drives, email accounts, clouds, social media etc. Most of us have a lot of these digital assets, but almost none of us think about what will happen to them after we die. There are several issues concerning digital inheritance: digital assets are intangible and for the most part, their holder's heirs will not be aware of them ; many of them are password protected and heirs will not know log–in information ; they tend to be numerous and a lot of them hold no financial or emotional value. These problems could be solved if individuals made plans for what is to happen to their digital assets post mortem, like they do for their tangible property. The obvious choice is to include digital assets in a will. However, there are certain particularities which have to be kept in mind when planning for digital inheritance. For example, wills are publicly pronounced after a person dies, so many people might be privy to sensitive and private information concerning deceased’s digital assets. When it comes to digital assets stored in internet service providers' (ISP) accounts, making plans will not mean much, since ISP have rules prohibiting anyone, other than the original user, from accessing these accounts. This paper will deal with these challenges of digital inheritance and possible ways on how to best prepare for it.

digital assets ; digital inheritance ; tangible ; intangible ; will ; heir ; ISP

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