If you die one day, will you let others inherit your digital heritage, or will you clear all the data with one click?
Recently, Apple officially launched the "Digital Heritage Project", once again pushing this topic to the forefront:
If you use an Apple phone, just update the system to iOS 15.2, and you will see a brand-new function-"Legacy Contacts".
Here, you can designate five people as your "traditional contacts" and send them short messages after setting them up:
"Little black, I have added you as my heritage contact. You can access the data in my account after I die. I have shared the access key with you, which will be automatically stored in your account settings. If I am gone, you can use this key to access my iCloud data. "
As this short message says, after you die, they can check the iCloud data in your mobile phone, including photos, videos, memos, manuscripts, personal information and so on, just show your death certificate and access key.
Then the question comes: will you set it?
Congratulations,
Another "social death" after death.
When I told my mother that "Apple has launched a digital heritage plan", she said that it would take time to consider who would inherit it, and I was not her first choice-
It can be seen that for a publisher, digital heritage not only has the risk of revealing privacy after death, but also may aggravate the disintegration of the family before death.
Just kidding. However, a popular online joke for many years may sum up most people's attitudes towards digital heritage:
"If one day I have a car accident and get hit by a car while walking on the road, I must also empty the chat records in my mobile phone in the air before I can faint on the ground with confidence.
After all, the old saying goes,' Don't be afraid of being smashed to pieces, but leave your innocence in the world.' "
In fact, digital heritage is not a new topic.
As early as 2003, UNESCO put forward in the Charter for the Protection of Digital Heritage that digital heritage is a unique knowledge and expression of human beings, which includes information such as culture, education, science, management information, technology, law and medicine generated in digital form.
In layman's terms, we can divide digital heritage into two categories:
One is the "property" heritage, which is "very valuable" to the naked eye.
For example, your Alipay balance, the glory of the king's out-of-print skin, online X-cloud members with one week left in validity, and NFT virtual artworks; In addition, the creator's "virtual assets" such as digital photo albums, photographic works, design drawings and personal patents can also be classified into this category.
One is the "spiritual" heritage, most of which can't be sold, but it has special significance to the parties. For example, your major platform accounts (WeChat, QQ, Weibo, Douban, Tigers), as well as chat records, personal diaries, browsing history, etc. In these accounts.
Obviously, the digital heritage that mankind wants to destroy most is the latter.
Many people say that people need the function of "one-click clearing" more than "legacy contacts"-
After your death, once someone tries to access the content of your mobile phone, the system will automatically format your mobile phone and empty all traces you left on the Internet with one click.
The "burn after reading" function of social software Snapchat is all the rage in social networks because it correctly grasps the social needs of paying attention to personal privacy. In the hot Japanese drama "Life Delete Office", the leading group also provides similar services for the deceased:
As a dying person, you can entrust the staff of Life Delete Office to delete/keep the data on your mobile phone, computer and other devices after your death-in fact, there are companies in Japan that do provide such services.
As for why some people insist on deleting digital heritage, Life Delete Office gives the answer:
Society always expects everyone to have only one personality, that is, what they look like. But in fact, everyone has unpleasant moments and unknown secrets. And these things that are hard to talk about and inconvenient to share are often hidden in electronic devices-
High-quality idols shine in front of the public, open their chat records, and may also find evidence of tax evasion;
In the circle of friends, you may be a person who loves life and is positive, but in Weibo trumpet, you may spit out your leaders and release hostility every day.
It is conceivable that nothing is more "socially dead" than revealing privacy after death.
You know, the people that such people want to hide most are often the people around them (relatives and friends); And this group of people is also the most likely to be their heirs.
If it were you, would you like them to inherit your digital heritage?
People who support digital heritage,
What are you thinking about?
The fact is that although there are still many controversies, many people are already open to digital heritage:
As early as 20 12, a survey by Du Nan Weekly showed that 52. 19% people hoped that their relatives could inherit their digital heritage.
The White Paper on China Testament Library released on 20021shows that more and more people include WeChat, QQ, game accounts and other items in their wills, and 2 1.35% of the post-90s want their digital heritage to be inherited.
Why do so many people "support" the inheritance of digital heritage?
Let's start with a few classic cases.
In 2004, American Eisworth died while on duty in Iraq. His parents want to access his son's Yahoo mail to keep his memory.
Because they were rejected by Yahoo! They took the latter to court. In the end, the court ruled that the password would not be provided, but the contents of the email would be burned into a CD and sent to the parents of the parties;
20 1 1 Ms. Wang from Liaoning, China, hopes that Tencent can provide her husband's QQ password, so as to obtain letters and photos related to it as souvenirs.
However, Tencent's response is that to get the password, it can only be operated by "recovering the stolen number".
From these two cases, we can easily see the necessity and controversy of the existence of digital heritage:
For ellsworth's parents and Ms. Wang, the digital legacy left by the deceased provides them with a channel to recall: photos of relatives or emails can be the sustenance of future generations.
Now many people's circle of friends is only visible for three days. Imagine that once you die, even if your loved ones want to find memories from your circle of friends, it will become a luxury;
Another key issue is that Internet companies only need to spend huge operating costs to store user information every year, so if a social account is idle for a long time, it will face the end of cancellation.
Therefore, most people strive for digital heritage, not to spy on other people's privacy, but to preserve the last trace left by their loved ones in this world.
But digital heritage can't be inherited by one or two words.
If you carefully read the user terms of major platforms, you will find that users actually have the right to use social software, and the ownership is in the hands of the company.
"No account can be given, borrowed, leased, transferred or sold without the permission of our company"-it is up to you whether people can inherit your digital heritage;
At the same time, you should also note that all major platforms have signed "privacy protection" clauses with users.
Therefore, the platform has the legal responsibility and obligation to protect users' personal privacy, and once others are allowed to inherit the digital heritage, it means that the platform gives users' privacy to others, which first violates the principle of communication privacy protection.
At the same time, it also means that the platform needs to be responsible for auditing the true identity of the heirs and clarifying their inheritance scope, which not only consumes a lot of technical and human costs, but also bears the risk of civil damages that may be caused by negligence in auditing.
Therefore, this also makes the development of digital heritage "blocked".
20 18 face case pushes the topic of digital heritage to a climax again;
20 12 a minor girl in Germany died in a subway station, but according to the only on-site monitoring and eyewitness testimony, the police could not find out the specific cause of the accident.
Therefore, the girl's parents want to log in to her daughter's Facebook account to see if there are any clues on it, but Facebook refuses to provide relevant content on the grounds of protecting personal privacy.
So the girl's parents sued Facebook, and after three trials and three judgments, the case was finally on 20 18:
According to the decision of the German Federal Supreme Court, Facebook needs to provide relevant information to the girl's parents.
Among them, an interesting point is discussed:
Let the relatives of the deceased inherit the digital heritage, will it infringe on the privacy rights of others?
In other words, Zhang San told you about his parents. As a result, after your death, these chats were recorded in the hands of your parents. Who will protect Zhang San's privacy?
In this case, the German Federal Supreme Court held that letting relatives inherit the digital heritage does not infringe on the relevant rights and interests of others. Because in the internet, people should be aware of the risks of exposure at the moment they send out information-
The chat record sent to you by Zhang San may be that your screenshot was forwarded to another person, or it may have just been seen by others at the scene.
The greatest significance of the case is that the final judgment made by the German Federal Supreme Court affirmed the rationality and legitimacy of digital heritage inheritance for the first time to some extent, which is of groundbreaking historical significance.
How to divide the digital heritage,
It's not up to you.
How many steps do I need to go through if I want to make a will and distribute my digital legacy today?
202 1 10, go to the Chinese Testament Library to experience the relevant processing flow of digital legacy wills on the channel of Upmaster @ Now.
As a result, it took the young lady in the video two months and four figures to complete the "distribution" of the digital heritage.
The fact is that distributing digital heritage is more than just leaving an account password-
Because the relevant legal system is not perfect, each social software has its own different regulations on the scope of use and inheritance of digital heritage.
Therefore, if you directly write "I declare that XXX will inherit my account" in your will, such a statement has no legal effect.
Before making a will, you have to consult the relevant details of major social platforms:
For example, WeChat still does not inherit the account. Relatives can only transfer the money left in the account of the deceased if they produce death certificates and other relevant documents.
The latest regulation published by Facebook is that people can designate a trusted person to inherit their account after death, and the "heir" can modify the cover picture and apply through friends.
On the other hand, you should make sure that the digital legacy of making a will really belongs to you, otherwise it is easy to make a big mistake.
20 10 sensational "Tulong Island" case is a typical example:
Lu, male, addicted to online games, has the top equipment "Dragon Slayer", worth 50,000 yuan. Later, he died in a car accident. When his wife Li Jicheng presented his digital legacy, she was unexpectedly protested by a third person.
It turns out that Lu still has a "wife" Yang in the game. "Dragon Slayer Road" is the equipment that he and Yang got through perfect cooperation, which also raises the question: "Shouldn't virtual property be inherited by virtual relatives?"
In the end, the court ruled that the two women each inherited 50% of the shares of Tulong Road.
In a word, the digital heritage still needs to be improved. However, in the future, there are many new possibilities for the spread of digital heritage:
Victor Mayer-Schon Borg, a professor at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, once suggested that an inheritance mechanism with "invalid time" can be set up for future digital heritage:
Logically, the diary will turn yellow and the ink will disappear. "We should also establish a gradual forgetting mechanism to make information gradually' decompose' or' rust' over time."
Another interesting thing is that just like donating corneas, you can also choose to donate your digital legacy after death-
Internet archives in the United States and the National Library of Singapore have begun to include valuable web pages and multimedia files in their libraries, so people can donate their digital heritage and contribute to the research in sociology and other fields. (Provided it is valuable)
Digital heritage may make you immortal: In 20 19, China National Museum and Sina Weibo announced that all Weibo contents would be preserved as digital memory and digital heritage.
At that time, some people said that they thought of the plot in the British drama Black Mirror: if the information stored is rich enough, we may be able to use these digital heritages to restore a robot exactly like the deceased.
So, back to the question at the beginning: What will you do with your digital legacy?
reference data
[1] The legal regulation of German digital heritage inheritance and its enlightenment to China-Cha Yanling
[2] China digital heritage research-Cui Can
[3] Who moved my digital legacy? Shen Qian
[4] Will you delete your digital legacy? Sun Chenxi