Consumer Issues for Planning and Managing Digital Legacies [Leading Edge]

Growing use of software applications in the home, the workplace, and in public places has resulted in increased production and use of personal digital files. These digital files may take the form of emails sent to colleagues, photos of family and friends taken on a camera or smartphone, music downloaded from a number of different services, or videos taken at weddings or birthday parties. In this environment of increased data production and usage, unavoidable questions arise as to what happens to these files when a person dies. There is, in general, a lack of understanding about the rights consumers have over the digital files they buy or produce that has implications in the context of death. The purchaser of a physical product such as a book, a CD, or a DVD has certain ¿¿¿normalized¿¿? rights over the product, such as the right to give the item to another person. This is termed ¿¿¿the right of first sale.¿¿? This allows for gifting, lending libraries, secondary markets of copyrighted work (such as book stores and secondhand record shops), and for bequeathing a collection of books or CDs to relatives and friends. However, regarding digital products and services such as eBooks and music streaming services, a different set of distinct and separate relationships are in place, and it is not always clear what the consumer¿¿¿s rights are in the context of death and the bequeathment of digital items. Consumers need to be made aware that when they press the ¿¿¿buy¿¿? button on an eBook or music file that they are not really buying anything at all. The appropriate term is ¿¿¿rent¿¿? or ¿¿¿loan¿¿? as there is usually no transfer of property in the transaction, only a limited right to use. In addition, the delivery methods of digital products are changing rapidly so increasingly there is no physical copy of the digital products, coupled with the inherent ¿¿¿right of first sale¿¿? licence embedded within the physical copy.