Consumer issues for planning and managing digital legacies

Abstract

Growing 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...