等我們死了：我的Email和網絡賬號要怎麼辦？

數字財產的範疇可包含軟件、網站、下載內容、網絡遊戲賬號、社交媒體賬戶甚至是電子郵件。僅在英國，人們持有的數字音樂總價值就可能超過90億英鎊(140億美元)。

What happens to our digital property after we die?

人死如燈滅，數據之火燒何方？

Wait! I found his iTunes password

等下！我找到他的iTunes密碼了！

LORNE GLADSTONE of Toronto is 58, but prudently pondering how to bequeath his digital property. Doing the paperwork after his parents’ death was a challenge. “When my time comes, I wonder if my children will even know what paper is,” he says. As a software developer, his virtual assets are both valuable and vital to his business. That exemplifies a problem. Online lives have increasing economic and sentimental value. But testamentary laws offer muddled and incomplete ways of bequeathing and inheriting them。

來自多倫多的洛恩•格萊斯頓現年58歲，但他如今已在慎重考慮自己數字財產的處置問題了。對格萊斯頓來說，當年同父母遺留下的書面文件打交道就曾頗費力氣。他說道：“當我百年之後，我都懷疑我的子女們是否知道什麼叫書面文件”。作爲一名軟件開發者，格萊斯頓的虛擬財產對其工作的價值及重要性不言而喻。這突顯出一個問題：線上生活的經濟與情感價值在不斷上升，然而對遺贈者和繼承者而言，遺囑法律仍然語焉不詳，不甚完善。

Digital assets may include software, websites, downloaded content, online gaming identities, social-media accounts and even e-mails. In Britain alone holdings of digital music may be worth over ￡9 billion ($14 billion). A fifth of respondents to a Chinese local-newspaper survey said they had over 5,000 yuan ($790) of digital property. And value does not lie only in money. “Anyone with kids under 14 years old probably has two prints of them and the rest are in online galleries,” says Nathan Lustig of Entrustet, a company that helps people manage digital estates。

數字財產的範疇可包含軟件、網站、下載內容、網絡遊戲賬號、社交媒體賬戶甚至是電子郵件。僅在英國，人們持有的數字音樂總價值就可能超過90億英鎊(140億美元)。中國一家地方報紙調查顯示： 五分之一的受訪者稱他們所擁有的數字財產超過5000人民幣(摺合790美元)。箇中價值不僅只在於金錢意義。Entrustet(一家幫助人們管理數字財產的公司)的內森•拉斯提格說道：“有14歲以下兒童的家庭可能會有兩張孩子們的照片，其它的則全部在網絡相冊裏”。

Service providers have different rules—and few state them clearly in their terms and conditions. Many give users a personal right to use an account, but nobody else, even after death. Facebook allows relatives to close an account or turn it into a memorial page. Gmail (run by Google) will provide copies of e-mails to an executor. Music downloaded via iTunes is held under a licence which can be revoked on death. Apple declined to comment on the record on this or other policies. All e-mail and data on its iCloud service are deleted on the death of the owner。

網絡服務供應商們的規定則截然不同——然而，他們很少在服務條款中能以清晰明確的語言加以說明。許多服務商爲用戶提供個人賬號使用權，但是其他人一概無權使用，即使是該用戶已經去世。Facebook允許逝者親人關閉賬號或是將主頁改爲悼念頁面。谷歌旗下的Gmail將會在未來向遺囑繼承人提供逝者的電子郵件複本。在iTunes中，用戶下載的音樂經過授權，可以在去世後撤銷。蘋果公司對此方面及其他相關政策拒絕評論。其iCloud內儲存的電郵以及數據會在用戶去世之後被刪除掉。

This has led to litigation in America. In 2004 the family of Justin Ellsworth, a marine killed in Iraq, took Yahoo! to court in Michigan to get copies of his e-mails. This year, a court in Oregon ruled that another bereaved American mother could use her dead son’s password to enter his Facebook account for a short period. Now five American states have enacted laws giving executors control over the social-networking profiles of deceased users。

美國已有相關訴訟案件。2004年，在伊拉克身亡的海軍陸戰隊士兵賈斯汀•埃爾斯沃思的家人一紙訴狀將雅虎告上密歇根州法庭，要求獲得他的電子郵件複本。今年，俄勒岡一家法院裁決，一位喪子之母可短期使用其子的密碼登錄他的Facebook賬戶。現今，美國有五個州已通過法律，允許遺囑繼承人使用逝者的社交網絡頁面。

But this raises the subject of privacy. Passing music on is one thing; not everyone may want their relatives snooping on their e-mails. Colin Pearson, a London-based lawyer, says access should come only with an explicit provision in a will。

然而，隱私問題卻又應運而生。傳輸音樂是一碼事，但不是每個人都樂意親人們窺探自己的電子郵件。倫敦律師科林•佩裏森說道，此類賬戶通行應當在遺囑裏有明確提及時纔可使用。

Such clearly expressed wishes may help. An internet law expert in New Delhi, Gurpreet Singh, has already seen a few cases of wills including digital estates. “People are slowly realising the value,” he says. A nascent industry is emerging to simplify the process. Entrustet, newly acquired by a Swiss competitor, SecureSafe, says it has 10,000 clients. It safeguards their passwords, and a list of who can access what when they die。

諸如此類明確表達的願望或許可以有所作用。新德里互聯網法律專家古佩特•辛格已經見過數例涉及數字財產的遺囑案件。他說道：“人們正在慢慢認識到數字遺產的價值”。新興產業正在不斷涌現以簡化其中過程。Entrustet存有一份名單，其中列有在用戶去世後指定登錄人員及可登錄賬戶。Entrustet宣稱其下有10000位顧客，最近它被其瑞士競爭者SecureSafe併購。

But laws, wills and password safes may clash with the providers’ terms of service, especially when the executor is in one country and the data in another. Headaches for the living—and lots of lovely work for lawyers。

然而，相關法律、遺囑以及密碼託管可能會與服務供應商的服務條款產生衝突，特別是在遺囑繼承人和存儲數據不在一國之內的情況下。當然，這是留給遺屬的難題，不過亦是律師的大批美差。