Bequeathing your flickr images

A very interesting article in this weekend's Financial Times (Nov 16/17, 2013): "Dead man's data". It points out how lawmakers have barely begun to think about the problems with inheriting data, such as digital photos, when the owner dies.

"Many wedding albums exist only on Flickr. ... For now, families grieving the loss of a loved one are at the mercy of corporate policies set by technology companies ... Yahoo accounts are 'non-transferable' and rights to all contents 'terminate upon your death', leaving families locked out of email archives and wedding albums, even if the deceased wanted to share them."

It's an article that we should all read and think about. If you can't lay hands on Saturday's FT, it is online at:

Technology - Dead man's data

One needs to be registered with the FT to read online articles. Full subscription is expensive, but one can register for free access to a limited number of articles. Go to:

Financial Times

I have free access to read a few articles a month, and find it useful.

Martin

Can't read it I wonder if they ever sorted out who
owns MP3's after someone dies?

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You can if you register for the free account.

Solution - don't rely on corporate storage, buy a NAS instead.

John K

This page explains most of it.....
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/sep/03/do-you-own-your-digital-content

Be careful if you use Apple's iCloud .....
"Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate your Account may be terminated and all Content within your Account deleted."

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I don't think its a legal issue, more an education issue. People really need to think about backup of media on local devices as well as online.

Just this week alone three people I know have lost their phones with precious photos on and did not back up any of them. When I explain to people about backing up digital media they say this is not the time to discuss digital backup. So when is the time?

I lost some of my archive a couple of years ago and all I had left where some lo res images stored on the net since 2002 so where no more than 400 pixels wide, disaster but at least I could still look at them. I now back up locally, on skydive and flickr, my data on flickr is mirrored on three accounts and my family have the passwords for them all in case anything happens.

^^

Good comment

I have my various account passwords etc backed up in a secure file, a couple of family members know the password so will still have access to my data, they can transfer images or close account's as required.
Probably not strictly legal but It's not very likely that the likes of Flickr will investigate the sudden closure of an account.

Exactly so. As an amateur who does not take lots of photos, I backup onto CD-ROMs. If you need to keep a professional collection, then backup onto an external hard drive. But what happens when, by mid 21st century, CDROMS and 32-bit MS drives have been replaced by something better? Keep one's backups rolling forward onto new technology.

The FT article covered other things apart from photographs: what happens to a PayPal credit balance if you are an active trader? Music collections on iTunes? I have no idea what happens to authors who have published books solely in electronic format.

Make sure that next of kin have your passwords and log-on details, if you want them to continue having access. My details now take up most of an A4 sheet of paper!

Martin

As we have ownership of these things then it would be part of our estate. As such, the solicitors would pursue such matters so that they could obtain probate.

I'm sure HMRC would include a PayPal balance in the scheme of things to calculate the value of an estate. They are not going to shrug their shoulders and let PayPal keep it.

Paypal are no different to any other bank in respect of funds held on behalf of its users.

Hip Hop shouldn't be anyone's thing!

Hip hop, a prosthesis? Hope the recovery went well.

John K

Can I wrongly declare my flickr account content to be worth £1,000,000 then leave to someone I don't like so that they incur inheritance tax

Read this article today. Seems vaguely relevant to this thread, and provides food for thought.

Not visible in the UK unfortunately Gwyn. What's the gist of it?