Who Owns Digital IT Collectibles: 'The Law Hasn't Caught Up Yet'

Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology

Home > Who Owns Digital IT Collectibles: 'The Law Hasn't Caught Up Yet'

Current News

Who Owns Digital IT Collectibles: 'The Law Hasn't Caught Up Yet'

2/1/2007

It's not really a stupid question. There have been people paying attention to such issues, as evidenced by this blog posting: "When you die, who owns your e-mails?"

First there is the practical question: How likely is it that you, pre-death, could even remember where all of the digital things you have stored away online are, much less the user names and passwords to retrieve them all. Now, imagine the executor of your estate trying to find and use all of that information. It's really not likely. And it's really going to be a headache for someone.

Then there is the legal question: Even though we use the traditional language like "stored away" and "my e-mail folders," most of the ownership and access to digital information on the Internet is controlled by those long, tiny-print agreements that we all scramble past and agree to, because we are eager to get to the functionality. In many cases, you might own nothing of what you have "squirreled away."

The Forbes article "Who owns your e-mail when you die?" lists the following ways in which digital assets differ from traditional ones, each with its own twist on "ownership."

Digital assets can be created and defined by contract.
Some digital assets are subject to intellectual property law.
Many digital assets can be endlessly duplicated.
Digital assets may be stored in a tangible asset such as a computer and therefore may affect the value of the machine.
In general, digital assets are licensed, not sold, and rights usually aren't transferable.

These days, when we read stories about people garnering $100k in extra income inside Second Life—and as Goggle uses a competition for students to draw 3-D campus maps (thus driving campus GIS folks nuts) in a not-too-subtle effort to recruit the students who will help it build a "Virtual Earth" that more and more people might actually be employed inside—it seems more and more likely that some of our finances will be getting tied up on line.

If you think about it, yours already may be. Do you, like me, "own" domains? Are they paid for by a company regularly and automatically tapping into a credit card? How will your spouse stop that, short of canceling cards, when you die?

Do your e-mail accounts overlap? Who's going to go through your personal e-mail accounts and remove the worthless business-related e-mails? Who's going to go through your business e-mails and remove the worthless personal e-mails? Who owns the digital images that you have stored away in Picasa—with copies on both your personal and work machines?

"With real estate, you have a survey and know exactly where the property is located," says Scott David, an attorney quoted in MSNBC's story. "With personal property, you have possession. Software and music are protected by intellectual property laws. But with e-mail or data, there is no traditional notion of property interest—in general, rights are established by agreements, and the law hasn't caught up yet."

"The law hasn't caught up yet." I wonder if it ever will.

Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP).

Cite this Site

"Who Owns Digital IT Collectibles: 'The Law Hasn't Caught Up Yet'," Campus Technology, 2/1/2007, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=45198

copy text (above) for proper citation