Digital inheritance

As Digital Inheritance is defined as the transfer of existing digital data of a person to another ( "beneficiaries ").

History

Roman law introduced the concept of universal succession. To German: universal succession. This refers to the transfer of the assets and rights to a successor.

Characteristics of digital values

At the inheritable digital values ​​include, for example, passwords, instructions, contracts in electronic form, business plans, patent applications, digital photos, medical information, diplomas, birth certificates, insurance policies, and bank statements. Digital values ​​(data, documents) are much more volatile, but easier to generate, by their nature, copy and move as physical values ​​. For this reason, central data repositories are growing in popularity. These digital values ​​are usually, the longer they are stored in more places can be found on physical storage media of service providers (eg Google Drive, Apple MobileMe, Microsoft Services, Salesforce.com, etc.). The contracts with these service providers, expire automatically but in case of death of the contractor. This confronts the heirs with many problems, since they no longer have rights to the data.

Unlike physical assets electronic values ​​can be copied as many times. This can cause problems when the digital value also has a cash value or data protection requirements subject. From the perspective of Erbberechtigen but it can also lead to problems if the heirs can not access the data, it is because they have no compatible readers more or simply do not have access to encrypted information is.

Another challenge results from the extreme Neuproduktionsmenge of digital values ​​. It is normal that a family 5-10 gigabytes per year produced of personal data (digital photos included). Heirs of digital values ​​are then faced with the problem to distinguish the important from the unimportant for them.

Transfer of digital data

In contrast to conventional inheritance of physical goods to close relatives and Erbberechtige, even purely digital acquaintances in the game can be with digital data. The digital acquaintances are often contactable only digitally. The transfer of digital values ​​also requires additional instructions ( which media the media can be read, with which the passwords encrypted data can be decrypted or simply even more information is structured as the data). If now dwell Erbberechtigen in different nations with different inheritance rights, not just the Ausmargung of local and international law is challenging, it can be very expensive, a death certificate to authenticate so that it is accepted in another country (the place where the data are stored, is often not identical with the domicile of the deceased ).

The use case

The digital inheritance should be everywhere considered where important data should be handed over to beneficiaries (under certain conditions, such as the death of the data owner ). Thus, the data owner has an interest in his store digital assets accessible ( for example, in a central data repository ) and then determine who is entitled to what data. The reliable notification of heirs, especially in the international context may file the administrator Testament with great challenges.

Another application is in the publishing of digital legacy. It is one of the deepest and oldest wishes of mankind to leave traces and to be remembered. The digital death threatens the legacy and memory of the present generation.

Legal perspective

From a legal perspective, it is important that the digital values ​​are also considered as part of the estate. The concept of universal succession means that the heirs take over the rights. These property rights are under various national laws, for example, in Switzerland subjective right ( open obligations, property, intellectual property, and others), as well as property rights of the testator.

Digital data can occur as part of the subjective right (eg copyright on a manuscript ). However, most digital data of an individual are not subject to the subjective right ( eg, passwords, photos, notes). For this data to flow into the inheritance, the testator must have possessed this data. Possession but is usually related to things, which in turn raises the question of whether digital data are fundamentally matters or whether only the media is one thing. Today the view that digital data requirements (physical aspects ) does not fulfill a thing.

So far, the digital data are stored on a physical medium, the data is viewed in the context of the physical property of the medium. This may not apply if the testator stores its data on a medium that does not belong to him, for example, an online server. In this case, it is crucial that the testator has a proof of entitlement (ie password). In this case, the password ( key analogy to a physical bank safes ) is a tool that allows access to the property. Then the access to the digital data falls into the genetic material. The Jurstik is today but on the assumption that, for example photos are treated equally from a physical photo album as digital photos. It therefore appears that the digital data which lie on a medium of a service provider in the inheritance of the deceased if the deceased had access and the data will not be deleted with the death of the testator.

If the testator does not want that all digital data is passed to all heirs, he must take appropriate precautions during his lifetime. Of course, the testator could, as long as he is the only one who knows of the data, pass the access key to a desired beneficiaries and none of the other heirs would know about it. However, several representatives of national legislations are of the opinion that the testator with testamentary disposition can not ensure that only one favourer awarded the contract, since the reading of the will, the other heirs wish to note that digital data exist and must be authorized thereby, access to these data (among many national legislations, for example in Switzerland ) to obtain since they have a right to information regarding the heirs of the estate. This is also the perspective of the minimum Heritage part intelligible.

Limitations and alternatives

In the absence of a solution, which implements the above use cases, it's probably easiest if the testator at regular intervals its data copied to physical media (eg DVD) and deposited this medium at his attorney or in a bank and also according to the testament noted. Since 2009, several services that implement a digital inheritance offered.