Facebook announced earlier this year a tweak in its digital afterlife policy, and Yahoo Japan is offering a host of services for signing off digitally once mortality strikes, as Brandon Bailey wrote here earlier this month.
Now a group of lawyers are working on a plan to standardize treatment of one s digital after-life according to NPR.
The Uniform Law Commission has created the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which would, NPR says, let relatives access the social media accounts of the deceased.
After Facebook s changes – it now will turn a deceased person s page into memorial mode and make it publicly available if that is how the person had set up their page in life – I wrote about how there is a patchwork approach to the issues.
Internet firms have a variety of approaches. There is no federal law, and only five states have laws regarding how to treat digital assets such as social media. California is not one of them.
The proposed act, which would require states to pass legislation, would override the terms of service of Internet companies that give the user, and only the user, access to his or her accounts, NPR says. Proponents argue that that would help the will s executor and family members, by allowing them among many things, access to email to find online bank accounts.
But Jim Halpert, head of the privacy practice at DLA Piper U.S., says that the proposed law goes too far:
The bill takes no account of minimizing intrusions into the privacy of third parties who communicated with the deceased. This would include highly confidential communications from third parties who are still alive — doctors, psychiatrists, and clergy, for example.
Companies like Yahoo Japan and Google are moving faster than these proposed changes to the law. So stay tuned for your digital afterlife options.
Above: A photo of a printout of the Facebook page for Loren Williams, now deceased, whose mother sued Facebook for access to Loren s account after he died. (AP Photo/Lauren Gambino, File)