LEGAL MEASURES FOR MANAGING THE DECEASED’S DIGITAL ASSETS IN ONLINE ACCOUNTS

Abstract

In the Internet Age, the digital media play an increasingly important role in people’s lives since a lot of people conduct more and more activities online. For example, they may store their photos in social media sites, write their personal blogs on websites and back up their document files in the cloud storage services.  As a result of these activities, the online users have created their digital assets which are stored in their online accounts. These digital assets, undeniably, possess economic or sentimental value, which should be considered as part of their estate after their death and shall be passed on to their heirs in the similar way as other tangible property. In this connection, if the digital assets are qualified as copyright works, the heirs shall continue to have copyrights over such digital assets for a period of fifty years after the death of online users.

This thesis concerns inheritance problems of digital assets which are usually barred by the terms of services (TOS), as set out by the internet service providers (ISP). These TOS generally restrict the right of survivorship and transferability of the digital assets in order to protect the online users’ data privacy and to reduce their administrative cost.  As a result, these terms inevitably prohibit the succession of digital assets by the online users’ heirs who have the legal rights to enjoy the benefits of these digital assets.  Moreover, Thai law does not currently recognize nor facilitate the access and management of such digital assets by the heirs.

  In contrast, certain states in the United States have passed laws and regulations to govern the access and management of these digital assets after the death of the online users since 2005 as several internet service providers, e.g. Apple, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo!, are located there. Therefore, it may be more appropriate for us to learn from the United States’ development in order to draft the new law to manage the digital assets of the deceased online users.

 As such, this thesis explores the legal approaches under the laws of the United States which govern the access and management of digital assets of the deceased users.  Pursuant to the study, the writer is of the view that passing a particular law to deal with the access and management of the digital assets after the death of the online users should be an appropriate approach for Thailand. This is because the proposed law can facilitate the digital executor in accessing the digital assets by requiring the internet service providers to disclose online accounts, while respecting the privacy of the online users.