There were several recordings made of the presentation, but most of them aren’t ready yet. But for now, we’ve got a few summaries for you. Update: Audio recording is available below.

Who Owns Your Web Stuff After You Die? Good Question By Giles Turnbull for Time’s Techland

Audio recording from SXSW

Graphic notes from ImageThink

Ustream recording from Dazza Greenwood

Note: The audio begins a few minutes into the video.

Prezi presentation from the panelists

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from our fellow panelists at SXSW Interactive. Dazza will join John and Evan at SXSW for the panel discussion, “You’re Dead. Your Data Isn’t. What Happens Now?“ Republished with permission from CIVICS.com.

In the lead-up to SXSW this year, in preparing to participate on a panel called “Your Dead, Your Data Isn’t: What Happens Now”, my fellow panelists and I spent considerable time discussing a new law that is truly a first in the US. House bill 2800, recently enacted into law in the state of Oklahoma, authorized the Executor or Administrator of an estate to conduct or terminate the social media and certain other digital accounts of the deceased. The accounts are a key aspect of the digital identities of the deceased, and the provisions of this statute raise many questions of law, commercial practice and public policy.

Download 2800

Specifically, the statute applies to any accounts of a deceased person on any
1. social networking site,
2. micro blogging or short message service website, or
3. email service website

There is no definitions section of this very brief bill, however, the words chosen are in common usage. The meanings, however, are likely to change over the years (possibly even months) due to the dynamic pace of innovation in this sector of the economy.

Interestingly, the word “site” is used to modify the social networking services, while the word “website” is used to modify the micro blogging, short message service and email service categories. It is entirely possible this is a distinction without a difference, however, my friend Dave Wieneke, of the renown blog UsefulArts.US, has observed many times that the direction of the web is away from traditional “websites” and toward services, especially those embedded within social media sites. If it should happen that the commercial and technological practices evolve past the usefulness of the word “website” during the lifetime of this statute, it is likely that the more inclusive term “site” will survive longer and apply to a greater array of services, widgets, facets and other atomic structures of next web.

Wikipedia indicates the main “social networking services” include: Facebook and Twitter widely used worldwide; MySpace and LinkedIn being the most widely used in North America; Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, VKontakte, Hi5, Hyves (mostly in The Netherlands), StudiVZ (mostly in Germany), iWiW (mostly in Hungary), Tuenti (mostly in Spain), Nasza-Klasa (mostly in Poland), Decayenne, Tagged, XING,^[4] Badoo^[5] and Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in South America, India and Central America; and Friendster, Mixi, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch, renren and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands and Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn in India.

The second category, “micro blogging or short message service website” calls twitter to mind most prominently. The phrase “short message service” typically refers to a mobile phone function, however the modifier “website” brings the technology back to a twitter model. To the extent telephone carriers open their SMS features through a portal or other web accessible service, perhaps that could be construed as falling under this section and therefore potentially under the scope of this statute.

The third catagory, “any email service website” suggests yahoo mail, gmail, hotmail and other such web-based e-mail services. Interestingly, many employers, universities and other organizations provide web-based e-mail services to their employees, students, customers and other associates. The possibly applicability in those contests remains to be seen.

The phrase “where otherwise authorized” is somewhat confusing. Perhaps it means where the Executor or Administrator has been authorized to assume ownership and control of digital accounts in the testamentary instrument, then the statute empowers and legislatively ensures the authority to so act. However, if a provision of the will or testamentary trust indicates the Executor explicitly does not have authority to use or terminate some of all of the listed digital identities, accounts and/or services, then perhaps the statute would not apply, because the Executor would not have been “otherwise authorized” to perform those functions. Statutory construction and interpretation of the legislation of the state of Oklahoma is not well known to me – if anybody has thoughts on the meaning of this phrase in the statute, please contact me with your perspective.

This statute, while providing some common sense clarity and a reasonable solution to the growing conundrum of what to do with digital identities of a deceased, also raises a number of unresolved issues. We can expect more statutes on a state by state basis, while federal agencies and local authorities also struggle to catch up to the new information age dimensions of constituents subject to the public sector’s traditional governance and regulatory roles. Meanwhile, some forward looking and proactive work by individuals, in their roles as consumers, students, patients, citizens and account holders of all types, would do well to begin thinking about what they want to happen to their own digital identities upon and after death.

Daniel “Dazza” Greenwood has focused his career on creating legislation and policy to support use of the Internet and enable online identity. He was previously a lecturer and researcher of law and technology at MIT and the MIT Media Lab where he developed identity, privacy, transactional and architectural solutions. Dazza runs the consultancy CIVICS.com, has led several open standards efforts and currently is helping to start up the eCitizen Foundation.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from our fellow panelists at SXSW Interactive. Adele will join John and Evan at SXSW for the panel discussion, “You’re Dead. Your Data Isn’t. What Happens Now?“

In the last 5-years, sharing online through services like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr has become mainstream. From stock-trading to eBay, email to blogs, we are more connected through digital communications than ever before. We have undergone a global culture shift that crosses classes, economies and governments.

Every person who uses an online service must agree to that company’s terms of service (TOS) to open an account. These densely written agreements are and filled with legal jargon and sometimes presented in a small window that scrolls forever. That big “I Agree” button underneath lures us to just cut to the chase. And that’s what most of us do: We click Agree without ever reading the fine print.

At that moment, we’ve signed away our control, without ever realizing how it might affect the lives of our families or our digital legacies.

Within a TOS are statements relating to who owns the content that you put on that service – status updates, blog posts, photos, whole web sites, digital purchases – and what can be done with it. Overwhelmingly, the TOS will state that accounts are non-transferable, meaning that you can’t legally give, sell or bequeath the ownership of your account to someone else. Complications set in when a user dies and the policy is unclear on the rights of next of kin or executors.

When it comes to the death of their users, most services are decidedly vague on the issue, if not completely mute. At a time of grief, families who are looking to know what options are available to them and the steps needed to exercise those options will be frustrated by lack of information. It is rare for companies to post fully developed policies related to the death of a user. Is access possible? What documents are needed for proof? Will families have control over all of the content? Will the account be deleted against the family’s wishes once the service learns of the user’s death?

Usually the only course of action is to try to contact someone in customer support to ask for help, and depending on the company and their attitude towards customer service, you may never get a response to your request for assistance.

So, why is it that most online services fail to address the death of its users adequately in their policies? It’s simply not profitable.

Say you are a startup, you drive revenue through customer acquisition and feature improvements. That is where your limited resources are best spent. It’s simply not a good use of resources to have people developing a policy that deals with termination of accounts, end of life and family access to content when you could be building the next release on your development roadmap. Development is forward focused by necessity and the pace is relentless. Creating a death policy is looking decidedly backward and doesn’t add to the bottom line.

Add to that the fact that most of the teams building startups are young and at a stage in their lives where they aren’t necessarily thinking about wills or death.

The global nature of the Internet adds to the legal issues. Take a service like iTunes for example. They are administering rights access to content based on licensing agreements and copyright present in each country. This explains, in part, why they handle requests for access to deceased accounts on a case-by-case basis.

I believe that it will take well-publicized legal challenges to high-profile companies who lack publicly posted comprehensive death policies in their TOS before there are significant changes to the status quo. In fact, the whole notion of what constitutes a reasonable TOS may well come under scrutiny in the process.

Until then, families and heirs to digital assets will continue to be frustrated in their attempts to simply gain access to, and control of, their loved ones digital legacy. In the rush to develop new technologies and with the mainstream adoption of an Internet culture, there is a long way to go before the laws and customs of the analog world catch up to the digital world.

At DeathAndDigitalLegacy.com, Adele McAlear explores the relationship between death, social media and technology. Researching, speaking and consulting on digital legacy, she seeks to help people understand the personal, social, legal and business implications of all that they leave behind. Based in Montreal, her marketing blog is at AdeleMcAlear.com.

We cover this pretty extensively in the second half of our book, Your Digital Afterlife, but here’s a quick run down of some popular providers and what happens at each:

• Facebook
• Gmail
• Twitter
• Yahoo
• YouTube

Facebook

Facebook covers the rights of deceased users in its privacy policy.

Your heirs can request that your account be deleted or “memorialized.” Memorialized profiles restrict profile access to confirmed friends, and allow friends and family to write on the user’s Wall in remembrance. You shouldn’t count on it staying active since anyone can request that it be memorialized by simply notifying Facebook and showing a death certificate or a news article that indicates your death.

Facebook has also introduced a new feature that allows you to “Download Your Information” This tool lets you download a copy of your photos, videos, wall posts, messages, friends list and other content. The file that you download can be opened in your browser so you can navigate through your content.

Gmail

Gmail provides instructions for gaining access to deceased user’s account in its help documents. They outline the steps to gaining access, which include a death certificate, and email you have received from the account in question and proof that you have legal authority over the estate.

Twitter

Twitter addresses this issue in its help documents:

If we are notified that a Twitter user has passed away, we can remove their account or assist family members in saving a backup of their public Tweets.
Please contact us with the following information:

1. Your full name, contact information (including email address), and your relationship to the deceased user.
2. The username of the Twitter account, or a link to the profile page of the Twitter account.
3. A link to a public obituary or news article.

Twitter is unique in that they offer survivors an archive of the user’s public Tweets. That’s actually very helpful as it’s often difficult to archive a Twitter account yourself.

Yahoo

Yahoo (which owns services like Flickr and Delicious) includes the following paragraph in its terms:

No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted.

Yahoo takes a harsh stance on death, but the good news is that they will not take this action without the receipt of a death certificate. It’s possible for you to ask your digital executor to archive your Yahoo account contents before presenting Yahoo with a death certificate.

YouTube

YouTube also lists their policy for deceased users in its help documents.

If an individual has passed away and you need access to the content of his or her YouTube account, please fax or mail us the following information:

1. Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.
2. The YouTube account name of the individual who passed away.
3. A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
4. A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the YouTube account.
5. If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the YouTube account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.

Digital Estate Services (http://www.digitalestateservices.com) is here to help. Their service can help unlock local files, recover user names and passwords for online accounts, and find important documents from a spouse or loved one’s computer in the event that they didn’t leave access.

Note: The Digital Beyond does not endorse any one service. We’re pleased to share Jeremy’s presentation with you, however we encourage you to evaluate and use the service of your choice.

We’ve been talking about digital death (and afterlife) in context of the physical death of the individual. But the idea that the court could execute your digital identity is fascinating and potentially scary. Here we are, barely 15 years into the modern Internet, and we considering the revocation of Internet privileges.

But there are greater problems that arise here. The Internet is now breaking away from personal computers, and is finding it’s way to public spaces. It’s also found it’s way to mobile devices. So would this ban VOIP, Internet enabled iPhone apps, and Netflix? Where does it end?

I think that access to the Internet will become more of a right, than a choice. I also expect to see a lot of legislation surrounding this issue in the coming years.

That fact that interactions help form our self identity and our bonds to other people reminds us that people are social creatures. So it shouldn’t surprise us that online social media is consuming the Web. An online analogy of an offline biological imperative seems like a natural extension for humanity.

All this online social interaction leaves behind artifacts, too. Tweets, Facebook messages, photos, videos and comment streams of all sorts.

So do these interactions belong to their creators or all the participants? If you are in your friend’s photo, is it also part of your identity? I would venture to say “yes”. But this affirmation raises some serious questions about ownership and our ideas of assets.

If virtual assets are going to be archived and permanently associated with a person, what assets should go into storage? Every picture that you take? Every picture that you are tagged in? Every picture that you talk about with our friends?

Is it possible that the interaction is the asset and that all the participants are the owners?

It seems to me that the old model of creator and creation – owner and asset may become outmoded. I see a new model of interaction and participant. But it isn’t that easy. User agreements form the only legal framework available, and they often state that service is the owner of the interaction.

Would a service that captures and archives the interaction make sense? Are the interactions out of context valuable?

As we’ve discussed before, there are two issues at play: content and access. 

Content is simple. Anything that you’ve created is your intellectual property and that is governed by traditional property laws. Many sites require that you accept a terms of service document that essentially grants them ownership of your content. That’s right, you don’t legally own the contents of your Facebook profile. Most of these services allow you to cancel your account and remove the content from their servers. In February Facebook took some heat for changing their TOS document to grant them complete ownership of your content.  This was to clarify that Facebook should continue to display messages you’ve sent to other people even after you cancel your profile. Their intention was not to deny you control of your own content, despite the legal terms. As long as Facebook values their users there’s a large social control that will prevent them from doing anything nefarious with your content.  You should check the terms of service for your accounts and be certain of content ownership.

Access is a bit more complicated. Policies often prevent your survivors  from accessing your content and this was the source of several lawsuits like the one mentioned by Law Vibe.  This is where your digital executor and digital will come into play. The digital executor can help you carry out your wishes according to a document giving them passwords and instructions. It’s simple and more direct, but lacks legal standing. Law Vibe provides a good set of instructions for how to do this, but you should also check out our Digital Death Survival Guide. My only caution is that you do not list user names or passwords in your legal will. Law Vibe doesn’t mention this, but it’s important to remember that a legal will becomes a public document upon your death.

I’m pleased to see that Law Vibe is thinking about this issue. This is certainly coming to the forefront of modern law practice.

Read more from the New York Times: When Others Need the Keys to Your Online Kingdom

Also on May 20th, WWAY in Wilmington, NC aired a story called Online After Death.