- Digital estate
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The term digital estate refers to data that can be inherited. Digital assets are (in contrast to physical assets) more dynamic in appearance and fugacity. Data sets that can be inherited can include passwords, instructive memos, digital contracts, digital receipts, pictures, medical information (e.g. about inheritable diseases).
Today, more and more values are resting on media that are not owned by the data owner but by service providers such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Salesforce.com. Also in contrast to physical values, electronic values can be copied indefinitely, which could be problematic if the asset represents intellectual property. On the other hand it poses a challenge for many data heirs to receive or to create copies for all interestees when they have limited IT skills themselves. A further challenge comes with the extreme proliferation of digital data. 5-10 Gigabytes new digital assets per year per family (if one takes digital pictures into account), is rather common.
Data heirs that are faced with an un-sorted data flood are often unable to separate the nice-to-have assets from crucial and core assets. Yet another problem is posed by the fact that contracts with service providers most often are automatically terminated (by the terms of service) as soon as the customer ceases to exist. Meaning that there is no right for the heirs to access that data. People's need to be able to pass on their digital assets have given rise to several companies, such as Entrustet, that specialize in providing consumers with ways to allow their heirs to inherit their digital assets after they die.[1]
See also
References
- ^ Entrustet, https://www.entrustet.com/
External links
Categories:- Computer law
- Inheritance
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