I have two twitter accounts (one for the law firm, one for me), one Facebook profile with two pages (one for the law firm, one for taxgirl), a couple of blogs and a handful of other accounts. Today, it’s pretty clear who owns those accounts and URLs. But what if something happens to me? Who owns those accounts then? My family? My beneficiaries? What if those aren’t the same folks? And do the accounts stay up? Or should they be removed?
It’s an incredibly complicated set of questions in a quickly changing world. Once, the only folks who worried about intellectual property, copyright and ownership interests were the relatives of musicians, journalists, artists and authors. But now, almost anyone can own intellectual property and copyright in public view, thanks to social media and the internet.
A recent case involving a death of a Facebook user - and Facebook’s subsequent and very public handling of the matter - has sparked interest in what happens to your social media accounts when you die.
When it comes to Facebook, they have a clear position on the matter. From Facebook’s Terms of Service:
What does memorializing an account mean?
When a user passes away, we memorialize their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account removes certain sensitive information (e.g., status updates and contact information) and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance. Memorializing an account also prevents all login access to it.
To make a report, Facebook says:
I’d like to report a deceased user or an account that needs to be memorialized.
Please report this information here so that we can memorialize this person’s account. Memorializing the account removes certain more sensitive information like status updates and restricts profile access to confirmed friends only. Please note that in order to protect the privacy of the deceased user, we cannot provide login information for the account to anyone. We do honor requests from close family members to close the account completely.
I couldn’t find a similar process on Twitter though they do have a policy on “inactive” accounts:
What is an inactive account?
An account is considered inactive if it hasn’t been logged into or updated in over 6 months. Inactive accounts may be automatically removed from Twitter. To keep your account active, be sure to log in and post an update within 6 months of your last update. Accounts that have no followers, followings, or updates may be considered squatting accounts and immediately removed from circulation, so do please avoid this if possible!
I imagine that other sites have similar policies (the question of domain names will be addressed in a future post).
But a bigger question is who should make the decision about removing or maintaining content - your spouse? Your parents? Your business partner?
In most instances, the default will fall to your next of kin - your spouse, your adult children, your parents… and right on up (or down) the laws of intestacy. And in many cases, that might be sufficient.
If you have social media content worth protecting, and some folks certainly do, you should consider this matter beforehand and make your intentions clear. Intellectual property is a property right. Of course, whether it’s worth anything is another matter altogether. But it is a right that allows you, in most cases, the ability to make decisions about the disposition of the property. So think carefully and act appropriately.
The easiest way to address the issue is to include specific instructions for the disposition or distribution of your content via your Will. It’s also important to make sure that your executor knows exactly what you want to happen to your property when you die - should it be sold? Preserved? Continued? Deleted? Keep in mind that merely deleting a profile from one social media site may not completely delete your results from the web: with most social media sites, by default, a public search listing is created which will appear on most search engines like Google. To delete those, you’ll have to update privacy settings or contact the search engines directly.
The bottom line is this: if you have real concerns about what happens to your copyright, your content and your name (or moniker) as it’s used in social media, take steps to resolve those concerns now. Don’t leave it to friends or family members to “deal with” later - they may not act the same way that you would…
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
There are a number of companies that purport to do this for you, for a charge of course. You provide them with all of your usernames and passwords for the various sites, and then upon your death they “distribute” them to who you designated.
Some of these sites purport to manage not just usernames and passwords for twitter and facebook, but for PayPal and for bank accounts! I don’t know what their internal procedures are, but I have serious concerns of them distributing property to someone not specifically designated by the decedent in their relevant documents.
David,
I’ve seen those companies, too. I think they’re a good idea in theory but I worry about how they work in practice.
Anytime you “designate” someone else to receive or administer property outside of your will, you have the problem of making sure that it’s consistent with your estate plan. Often, as with beneficiary designations on IRAs, bank accounts and the like, once the designation is made, it’s forgotten about - even when circumstances change (think divorce, death, incapacity).
Just as important, I’m not sure whether these companies make a distinction between those should receive the property versus those that should administer the property. That’s a huge question. And if the person is to administer the property, what happens to it: should it be deleted, sold, etc? These are issues that I’m not sure are resolved with these companies - a Will is still a must!