[ti:New Laws Needed to Deal With Users' Digital Legacies] [ar:Christopher Cruise] [al:Technology Report] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English Technology Report. [00:04.60]Benjamin Stassen took his own life in twenty-ten. [00:09.43]His parents thought their twenty-one year old son was happy. [00:14.13]Since his suicide, they have attempted [00:18.08]to learn why he killed himself. [00:20.94]Alice and Jay Stassen thought Benjamin's Facebook account [00:26.63]might hold clues to his suicide. [00:29.93]But the account does not belong to them, [00:32.63]nor did it belong to their son. [00:35.68]Facebook owns everything in his account. [00:39.27]That is what the company says in its user agreement. [00:44.36]Jay Stassen says he found it difficult [00:47.76]even to communicate with Facebook. [00:50.51]JAY STASSEN: "If you search on the home page of Facebook [00:54.96]for an email address, a mailing address, a phone number, [00:59.96]a contact person to assist in a situation like we've been in, [01:06.01]you will find a dearth of information. [01:10.00]A court ordered the company to let the Stassens [01:13.48]see their son's account. [01:15.44]However, Facebook has yet to obey the order. [01:20.40]Thirty-four-year-old Mac Tonnies died [01:23.94]in his sleep in two thousand nine. [01:27.00]He left behind a lot of online friends, [01:31.18]many of whom liked his futuristic blog, "Post-Human Blues." [01:36.47]Work on the blog stopped when he died. [01:40.82]A short time later, the comments area [01:44.81]was filled with unwanted advertising. [01:48.06]That angered his friend Dia Sobin. [01:51.95]DIA SOBIN: "It's really like a desecration to find spam [01:55.20]in that comment section in that blog, [01:58.15]which basically has become almost like a virtual burial plot." [02:04.22]Lawyer John Boucher stays informed [02:07.17]about digital rights and the law. [02:09.57]But he admits that he and his wife [02:12.91]have signed many user agreements without reading them. [02:17.61]He says he would not know how to get information [02:21.25]from his wife's accounts if she dies. [02:24.24]JOHN BOUCHER: "I have no clue. [02:25.71]So there is a dual problem here. [02:27.58]One is people don't think about it. [02:29.74]And two, even if they did, [02:31.09]they might find they are legally barred from doing it. [02:33.14]I personally think what's gonna happen over time [02:35.78]is there are going to be model laws drafted [02:37.58]to deal with all these circumstances. [02:39.63]But they're gonna take years to be accepted by the states, you know. [02:42.83]There's going to be a gray area for the foreseeable future." [02:47.02]Some businesses now are offering people a way [02:50.78]to control what happens to their online information after they die. [02:56.88]One way to do this is to place your online accounts and passwords [03:03.12]in a digital storage area. [03:06.02]You give the owners of the area orders about which information [03:11.06]to destroy and which to give others when you die. [03:15.50]Mark Plattner was one of Mac Tonnie's friends. [03:20.04]He recently used a program called Sitesucker to download Mac's blog. [03:27.04]He then uploaded a copy of the blog to a new web site under his control. [03:34.06]Mark Plattner says we should all plan our own digital legacy. [03:40.83]He says "don't be passive -- get to work on your online afterlife now." [03:47.75]And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. [03:52.32]You can leave comments about this story at 51voa.com. [03:58.05]I'm Christopher Cruise.