Digital inheritance : assessing the need of legislative intervention

Abstract

Technology has become a fundamental part of our everyday life. Today, it is hard to imagine a world without computers. Without even noticing, most of us are becoming more and more digital and moreover, with the advent of the Internet our lives are slowly moving online. Traditional letters has been replaced by electronic mails, Facebook and Flickr are today the depository of most of our photos, while several hours of music and movies are today rarely found on compact disks but are located on various servers across the globe. While this technology has brought various advantages during our lives, it could present a problem after we die. In fact, while ownership and succession rights of traditional assets, such as cars, jewellery and land are protected by long-established laws, it is not clear what governs the disposition of digital assets post-mortem. In addition, due to lack of specific legislation, service providers are creating terms and conditions in their best interest, sometimes to the detriment of users. Besides being cumbersome and unclear, most of these policies also prohibit the transfer of digital contents to third parties. In actual fact, when family members sought access to digital accounts of their deceased loved ones, service providers refused on the grounds of privacy. While post-mortem privacy is not a recognised term, it is clear that it is an area of law which may also be a hindrance to digital inheritance. All these conflicts and uncertainties has already raised several questions and in fact court disputes between family members and service providers started to emerge. This triggered a few countries to start analysing a new area of law to try and find a solution on how to handle the transfer of digital estate post-mortem. While no definite answer to this question exists, this thesis will bring to the attention of Maltese legislators the value and importance of digital assets and try to raise concern before we start facing legal battles in our courts.