Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way To Preserve a "Digital Inheritance"?
First time accepted submitter ron-l-j writes "The last few months a digital inheritance idea has been floating around in my head, and I am sure the thought has crossed your mind as well. With Google talking about the inactive account program it made me wonder, how do I make sure my children get my iTunes, and amazon movies? I have plenty of mp4 movies on my server that will just set itself to admin with no password after I do not log in within a 6 month time frame. But what about the huge amount spent on digital content every year? What's the best way to make sure your "digital inheritance" gets passed down?"
I keep all my media files on a shared server. Everyone in my family knows the password.
For all my accounts, I use passwords with the same 6 character prefix, and varying suffixes. The suffixes are listed on an appendix to my will. They are also on an XD card that I keep in this keychain fob in my pocket.
But I only record the suffixes because both my wife and daughter (age 14) know the prefix. So if the prefix were 7xU32w, then the list might say "correct horse battery staple", but the real password would be "7xU32wcorrect horse battery staple". If anyone outside my family saw the password list, it would be worthless to them because they don't know the prefix, nor do they even know that there is a prefix.
Any of it.
Few would care for their parents music collection.
It's simple, just rip a copy and keep it locally therefore you don't have to trust them.
You have a non-transferable end-user license so all your digital stuff goes away and amazon and apple and everyone else is happy. That's why digital content is bullshit -- because you are just renting it and don't really own it.
What's the best way to make sure your "digital inheritance" gets passed down?
Put it on physical media and give it to them. Or remove the DRM (if any) and put it on a disc and give it to them. Or (if you're okay with it) move it to a third party pay system like Google Drive where you can make it readable to them. Keep in mind that in doing so you will almost certainly be violating the usage agreement you clicked on with the distributors your got that music from -- in some cases you are violating it two or three different ways in that scenario.
... meh:
This story wasn't true but you'd essentially be facing the same obstacles.
Based on principle that I don't want to get into, I refuse to purchase anything from Apple. So I don't have to deal with that problem. I do make purchase on Amazon, however, whenever a Big Bach box of 100 Bach songs goes on sale for $1. So what I do is I download them all in mp3 and put them out on a redundant SAN in my house. I do this with all books, music and movies -- if I buy the CD or DVD I rip them out to this. If I get a DRM'd ebook, I free it with calibre and put it out there. Pretty sure I'm violating a ton of shit doing this but
2.2 Restrictions. You must comply with all applicable copyright and other laws in your use of the Music Content. Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you may not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer or use the Music Content.
Every five years or so I upgrade the drives to medium quality drives that are larger for more storage. So this machine running as an internal server to my home is unencrypted and I can access it with my PS3, Xbox or computer. I will simply hand over that machine and drives to my offspring in my final will and testament.
... I'm sad that I cannot give my children my old Lucas arts games. The media is archaic and my "license" with the company is meaningless more and more each day as Disney dismantles and guts LucasArts. I wrote a journal entry about this in 2006 and it was on the front page but that discussion seems to have been lost to the ages. I'm certainly not the first person to puzzle over this quandary and it will only snowball further and further.
You should honestly still be asking about MMORPG accounts, apps and games that you paid for
My work here is dung.
You don't pass on a "digital inheritance" of purchased digital content, especially one hosted on some cloud service.
At least, not officially. The account would still have to be in your name and the company would have to believe you were still alive.
The true answer is to purchase physical content. CDs, Blu-rays, real actual discs that contain ALL of the data. Anything that requires a company's server to be available for authentication or data is eventually doomed to failure, and will not reach future generations (because, as we well know by now, business needs change and customers get hosed because of it).
IANAL, and I haven't checked the license, but I suspect you legally don't own rights that can be passed on upon your death.
Put all of the relevant information in your will, or in a sealed & notarized envelope only to be opened upon your death. Accounts, password, approximate contents, the whole shebang. If you're worried about someone taking this information before you're dead, put in a single account and password to your KeyPass database, or an e-mail account that only has usernames / password, etc. Then, find some way of tracking access to that account, so that it pings you when someone uses it. Heck, even add a 1-week timer to it, so that they have to be sure you're dead before they can get those passwords.
Basically, rely on the systems we've always used to pass along our inheritance.
Cynical Idealist
I bet Hollywood and the RIAA would like to assume you'll make the only sensible option and inform your beneficiaries to use your life insurance to repurchase all such content you think you own.
Lets say Google does implement an inactive account system. Create a process that detects that account deletion and then sends out an email to your family members with a copy of your keepass file, that way they will have access to all of your accounts after you pass away.
I'm pretty sure when you die the license agreement you have between Apple or Amazon (or whoever) is ended and ownership ceases.
Anyone actually read that thing?
crazy dynamite monkey
Do the license agreements for iTunes and Amazon digital movies (and music) allow you to pass them on to others?
There are two ways that I can think of. The first is to just list all the titles, and then provide a link to the Pirate Bay. You could even save them time and torrent the titles yourself first.
The second is to provide your password (e.g. in an encrypted container, with the password to that in your will) and hope that the companies will not realize you are dead. I know, maybe a better idea would be to stop licensing stuff and actually outright buy it. Buy DRM free, and you can make a copy yourself. Don't purchase anything that requires DRM or whatever.
The third way (which doesn't do what you ask) is to just forget it. Just set it to die when you do.
Also, just delete all the porn. I'm sure your kids don't want to know what sort of weird stuff you are into.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
The first thing I thought is that the record/movie companies generally don't want you to hand over digital copies.
Instead you should take this into consideration when you "buy" those things and not pay more than half of what you would for something that you could transfer.
This way you will have enough leftover money for you children to buy the same copies if they want them.
The problem is the concept of the license instead of the purchase. The media companies want to get away from the idea that you 'own' anything. In order to do that with the shift to digital goods they 'license' everything. This way when you die they can claim that all of your purchases were in fact not purchases but in effect lifelong rental agreements. Your heirs get nothings and all of the money you spent becomes wasted.
There are two potential ways too challenge this. Someone could list a large number of digital assets in a bankruptcy case and get the trustee to challenge the idea that they cannot be sold. To the best of my knowledge the only time this came up it was settled out of court without setting precedent. The other way is to have the trustee of someone's estate challenge this when you die. The bottom line is that you have to have enough digital assets for the trustee to feel that it is worth their time and money to fight over. Since most people only have a couple grand or so in digital assets it usually isn't worth the court costs to try to recover them.
The practical alternative is to include your account password in your will so that your heirs can log into your account and use it after you pass away.
Keep all that stuff on physical media unencrypted, and your heirs get it along with all the other junk in your attic.
Your passwords could be stored in a similar way, or you could get clever about it (online vault, with the password in your will or whatever).
Just assume that anything protected by DRM doesn't belong to you in the first place. By the time you die chances are half of it already won't even be accessible by you because some company went bankrupt. Whatever promises you've been given are about as well as those given to your parents by the 8-track recording standards committee.
you own them with a non-transferable license, you can't give it to anyone. When you die, they can't legally take posession of them because of the terms you accepted when you bought them.
What makes you think that your children will want it? Music and movies go stale. I have a vast collection of music from way back when, that I never listen to.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm wondering if the submitters parents have carefully organized their collections of VHS videos and LP's to pass on to 'Ron'... LOL of course not, they've got better things to do and they know subby has other interests these days.
half of these sites were not around 10 years ago and all of them 20 years ago
how do I make sure my children get my iTunes, and amazon movies?
Believe me, they really don't want that shit. You might as well ask how you can make sure they get your valuable coffee can full of odd-sized bolts and your collection of cancelled checks going back to 1978.
Do not pay money for digital downloads of movies or music. Do not purchase e-books. Only purchase games which have interesting multiplayer portions.
Stop giving them your money. Just stop doing it.
Make an archive of a keepass database, with a working windows binary, as well as the source code. Even if they can't figure out how to use it, someone should be able to, even when you're long gone. Being an open format that's currently widely used, it'll probably be around for quite a while.
Then put your prefix on it, with an additional password that will be released somehow when you're inactive for too long. Of course make sure you only include stuff you want in there.
My late father-in-law was a DJ. We have several boxes of his LPs, 45s and reel to reel tapes in the garage. Would you like them? If you call now I'll throw in a few milk crates of our VHS tapes, CDs and DVDs at no extra cost.
In contrast, we also have 40 years or so of 8mm/VHS family video that he put on DVD before his death. DVD isn't perfect, but those get backed up and have been shared with family.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Am I the only one who thinks that this is a little bit strange? If someone (in this case a spouse or parent or grand-parent) dies there are far greater issues involved than who gets to download some random stuff. As long as the important information about bank accounrs, insurance, etc. and personal stuff like letters, photos, home movies are accounted for there's really no point in worrying about stuff you bought. Alternatively, if you really want your heirs to inherit the music you liked to listen to, the books you read, and the movies you cared for, how about you get physical copies? There's something special about taking a book from the shelf knowing that a loved one who has since passed on did the same thing, held it in his hands, read the exact same printed lines on the exact same paper, and that it has the smell of, let's say your grandfather's pipe still lingering between the pages. Compare that to a sterile bunch of DRM encumbered bits on some computer. In short: Think about practical issues first and then think about sentimental value rather than how much money you might have thrown at Apple and other companies.
As has been pointed out several times, the license probably doesn't allow for that.
Take your hypothetical death out of the equation, and ask: how would I transfer ownership of my digital media to someone else right now? I think you'll find the answer is the companies involved have stacked the deck in their favor, and there is no mechanism to do that.
In their interpretation, you don't own it, you bought a limited license to use it only how they approve.
If there's no legal mechanism you can transfer ownership of it while you're alive, what makes you think your death changes anything?
It's not 'property' per se. It's the new fangled digital property, which you don't own and have very few actual rights to. And those rights aren't transferable.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Consider your IRA, 401k, etc. holdings. Unless your spouse or heirs know the passwords to all your Fidelity/Putnam/Vanguard/Hancock accounts, it'll be a major pain to get at your money. Heck, what with all-electronic statements and stuff, it may be really difficult just to find out your accounts exist (and their numbers).
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The days of family photos being passed down are gone. A shoe-box full of slides is remarkable durable, barring a fire. When grandma dies her collection of digital photos dies with her. While perhaps no exactly a "first world problem" it's a pretty significant issue when you consider the amount of history that can be lost. It's especially important to artists. Imagine if all of art produced by the likes of Picaso, Rembrandt, Van Gogh vanished when the died and someone shut down their computers. Most archival media available is susceptible to silent bit rot and spinning media requires care as well.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
What makes you think your kids are in any extent interested in your digital media? If you think digital media defines you as a parent, maybe you should re-calibrate, spend more time with your kids, not your media.
... in a manner of speaking. This is a well known problem in crypto.
My way: all of my passwords and secret documents are in an encrypted folder which I update along with my will. Included are final farewells, secrets, where the bodies are buried, and so on. The key is split (look up PKI key splitting) into 5 parts. My girlfriend, father, buddy at work, and two of my friends each have a part. For security reasons, those are just examples. Four of those parts together are required to unlock. At my death each one turns in their part to the executor of my will who already has instructions on how to get it put together.
It is not a good idea to naively split a 10 char password into two 5 char pieces, and assume that brute force will be necessary to guess one of those parts. That is a very dangerous assumption if you are not an expert with the particular algorithms used.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Think of it as a longer-term rental
You have access to it until the provider decides it is no longer profitable to maintain the servers
Maybe because it's shit music.
I'm counting the number of famous bands from 40 years ago which still are famous versus the number of famous bands from 10-5 years ago which still are famous. The former number is much, much larger than the latter.
The change started around the end of '90s-early 2000s when it became a lot easier to create "immediate" music with close to no skill; before, bands relied on their members' ability to play instruments well and come with imaginative lyrics. After that time threshold ('99-2001) the advance of electronic means to programatically generate music (loops, beats, etc) made it easy to pick a bambi in bikini or mini-skirt, have her yell some meaningless words in a microphone while some sound engineers made the voice sound pretty and others made it match the background generated song, rinse and repeat, publish, see money flowing in like crazy.
That's why I'm stuck to 20th Century in terms of music. I was then mesmerized by the ability of singers to keep a note for 20+ seconds in a live concert, the amazing skills of drummers to bang their drums in a 15+ minutes solo, the incredible features of guitarists to shred notes with ease and all of them kept emotions flowing through me. Now all I see is 4-minute songs which yield ansolutely zero emotion. More tits, less music.
Recently, I briefly enjoyed dubstep (it was something new) and then it became plain and repetitive. Every skillless wannabe jumped the bandwagon and squeezed out the same stuff with minor variations.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The fact that you mentioned iTunes is a very serious warning sign. I have no idea about Amazon, but it is known and I believe it has been upheld in court, that no person has ever bought anything from iTunes. YOU NEVER BOUGHT ANYTHING ON ITUNES. Every file is licensed. That isn't to say you should hesitate to break the law (what's done is done; chalk it up to fraud on their part) but stop using iTunes to "buy" things, and investigate Amazon very carefully before you continue using them. For example, I know for sure that I literally purchased (and now own) all my music CDs. Get up to at least that level of ownership.
If ownership is not offered or can't be usefully taken advantage of (e.g. video), because of laws like DMCA (e.g. you can't legally make use of purchased Blu-Ray discs) then stop buying and switch to piracy, at least until the conventional market opens. You should never feel guilty about pirating things which aren't for sale. Just make sure you're ready to come back to the table if they ever come back to the table; don't ever commit to the impasse being permanent or else you lose the moral high ground. And of course don't pirate things which don't need it (music).
My woman stands to inherit-by-default our legal collection of music and our illegal collection of video. And she'll be looking over my shoulder when the next RMA-ed disk comes in and we re-add it with mdadm. That plus Google means she'll be ready, if something happens.
The part about the machine going passwordless after 6 months' inactivity is a little suspicious, too. That sounds both insecure (can someone fake it by diddling with the clock?) or inconvenient for the bereaved during the 6 month wait. Just have a family member know the damn password, already.
Am I the only one confused about the 6 month timer? Who is going to leave a server running for 6 months after your death? Is this in a remote datacenter where you're always paid at least 6 months ahead? Is everyone relevant already informed that the password drops after 6 months so they'll know to check? Is the password even needed to access the files (is this data encrypted) or could they just mount the drive on another machine? I'm imagining messing with the BIOS or spoofing the NTP server to provide it a future time but I can't see going through that effort for a bunch of movie files. Fun way to get at any secret encrypted files though...
how do I make sure my children get my iTunes, and amazon movies?
By changing existing copyright law. The *AA will fight the inheritance tooth and nail. "Our contract was with ron-l-j, and not his heirs."
Think bigger.
1) Your kids probably don't want it. How much of your grandfather's-era of music would you actually listen to? Not much. Sure, they'd like to keep a photo or two for "show-and-tell" but it won't mean much to them later, and 99.9% of what you want to give them, they won't be interested in. When people die, they have a lot of crap to go through, and most of it gets destroyed or sold - nobody keeps EVERYTHING. The first things to go are mass-market commercial items that can easily be replicated / recovered.
2) Your kids won't know what to do with it. It's become hard to play web video from 10-15 years ago (when was the last time you installed Quicktime / Realplayer?). Doesn't matter what you do, they probably won't be able to play it (DRM, etc.) - you can scream open-source all you like, the fact is that by the time they grow up, unless they are as geeky as you, they won't be able to play it.
3) Out of all the crap I could have "inherited", I kept only what was personal and important. There probably *WAS* value in the old 78's that I took to the charity shop, but to be honest, it wasn't sentimental value so who cares? There's no way I could listen to the music on them and tolerate the slow-droning that passed for music back then. And the stuff I did keep was daft, for a reason and - without exception - tangible. There's enough non-tangible stuff in my head from dead people without some "virtual" music that I could pick up in seconds if I really wanted it.
4) When they get older, they'll care less. They will be working and could buy your favourite music on the format of the day for nostalgia, if they wanted it. Chances are they won't dig out the old CD player except to blow the dust off and show the kids how music "used to be" (like previous generations would demonstrate their phonographs etc.). Fast forward a generation and all your Netflix accounts (assuming that company is even AROUND by then) won't mean anything to your family. That favourite movie that they always snuggled up to watch as children? Chances are they don't remember as adults or - if they do - they'd prefer it on a convenient modern format which they would buy themselves anyway.
5) The generation problem. I know things about my grandparents. I know next-to-nothing about my great-grandparents. I'd never seen them, they were dead before I was born. Hence, I don't really have more than a passing interest in them. I know zero about their parents and the further back you go, the less I know and the less I care. I probably *am* related to someone famous at some point - almost everybody is and even simple maths provides the answer - every famous person of ten generations ago probably has nearly a thousand people who can trace their ancestry directly to them today, and millions more whom can get there with third-cousins twice-removed or whatever.
Sure, it'd be cool to have a piece of documentation etc. for filling in a family tree but - thinking about it - my dad probably does have that kind of stuff about his own granddad. But why would he show it to me / pass it to me? I have no connection with the person it came from and it would mean almost nothing.
Now consider what it would mean to see a list of music that your grandfather liked, or your great-grandfather. Now consider how much it would be different to have that music in some online-only account that's tricky to get into (and almost certainly the details will be lost by then), impossible to play if you do, may not even exist any more, etc. It's not as much as you think.
And by then most of that stuff will be so old-hat it won't even be put onto TV / radio as it would have been repeated a billion times and gone through the "gold" nostalgia channels and be next-to-worthless, like asking me to watch something that my great-grandad saw at a music hall. Interesting. Once. For a minute. That's about it.
6) All this effort takes you away from your kids. They honestly won't give a shit beyond lip-service and keeping
Your children won't want any of your music and movies anymore than you wanted your parent's polka collections and Bob Hope Christmas specials. Stop wasting your money on digital media and pass down a real inheritance.
I use a commercial service like www.securesafe.com. I keep my 80+ password and all important files (e.g. Insurance documents, etc).
If I die, disappear or am otherwise "no longer here", two of my relatives enter on the website a code I gave them.
The system then tries to reach me during a certain period on all known addresses (mail, mobile, etc), if it fails it assigns each password and document to the specified beneficiaries. (It does not just share PW).
The creepiest feature of the platform, tough, is the accompanying message you prepare for the case your beneficiaries receive access to the passwords. "My Dear, if you read this message I am now dead"...
Shitty music and movies go "stale." This does not happen with quality media.
Ah, where's the "Naive" moderation when I need it?
Yes, some things go stale, and many come back for seconds years later. I'm 54, and have watched numerous movies from before my birth. My daughter (22), has watched tons of movies from before her time. She's recently discovered Sinatra (I was never a fan myself), and loves it. So, just because you don't want it, does not indicate that your offspring won't. Tastes change, styles come and go....one size doesn't fit all.
Just another day in Paradise
I'm just going to state the obivous: NEVER, EVER, BUY ANYTHING ENCUMBERED WITH DRM! Or at least not without knowing you can remove it. This is what I do. I buy digital content all the time, but music only in the form of MP3's or otherwise unencrypted formats, and ebooks only in MOBI or ePub formats, from which the DRM is easily removed.
I don't buy movies online, since they aren't sold without DRM yet, and it can't be reliably removed yet. I buy them on physical discs, which may have DRM, but which I can at least pass on to anyone I want.
Few would care for their parents music collection.
A few years ago, I was helping my teenage daughter with her homework. My wife walked in, and told us that Michael Jackson had died. My daughter asked "Who's Michael Jackson?"
How does not knowing the band/artist make one unable to appreciate a great piece of music? I can see the other side, being a fan of a band/artist can make one like something that is in truth, of low quality. However not knowing the band/artist would seem to make one more neutral when evaluating music.
You don't have anything to pass along, because you exchanged money for the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to consume that piece of data. You entered into a contract that said you weren't going to give any of this stuff to anyone else, so that's taken care of.
Piracy
According to the RIAA and other groups, its not your content (or at least it won't be) so don't worry, there will be no inheritance.
It seems to me a difficult thing to pass on a bitcoin inheritance.
If all you intend to leave your children is your MP3 collection, then that is pretty sad.
First, don't BUY digital movies. There is no point to it. Even buying physical movies is stupid. Unless you are absolutely going to watch a movie more then 5 - 6 times there is no economic reason to spend $20 - $30 on a movie you are going to watch once or twice. People have this silly notion of collecting content, whether its physical disks or digital files, but it it economically stupid to buy a movie in this day an age of instant access for a few bucks, especially when a year later its on Netflix. There is no reason to spend a fortune accumulating a movie library which its more economical to rent or subscribe to services to access that content on demand, and in the future it will be just easier and cheaper to access movies and TV shows on demand.
When it comes to music there has not been a music service that has forced DRM since iTunes when DRM free about 5 years ago. So you can transfer your music to a hard drive and give them that, assuming they want to listen to 30 year old music.
But I guarantee your children don't care about any movie or music you "owned" when you pass, especially if you unwisely blew through all "their" inheritance money to accumulate it. Buying music or movies is NOT an investment.
Also there is no point to have a crazy scheme to reset passwords on a file system, any content can be "reowned" by a new admin account, also why are you password protecting your movies, just throw them onto a shared family folder anyways.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If you plan to die soon, you are in trouble. While you can record account logins and passwords, giving those to other people is frequently a TOS violation. Giving accounts to other people, splitting them up or merging them is simply not something most services support or outright forbid. DRM-free downloads are possible with some services, but it can be a lot of hassle to download them all and archive them in a manner that would be useful. Only chance here is that the laws get changed to give you back some of your consumer rights, it seems to be slowly happening in Europe already.
If you plan to die in 60 years or so, I really wouldn't worry. Those things being digital means that there is zero collectors value for them, so by the time the data gets handed over to your kids they will be of as much use as old VHS recordings of Star Trek, i.e. worthless, as you can get better quality versions of those shows for free on Hulu.
[quote]I have plenty of mp4 movies on my server that will just set itself to admin with no password after I do not log in within a 6 month time frame. But what about the huge amount spent on digital content every year? [/quote]
Uh, why?
As for the rest, pass on anything that's DRM-free (like the iTunes and Amazon music), and delete the DRM movies. If they want the movies they can buy it for themselves.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
>> how do I make sure my children get my iTunes, and amazon movies?
Actually I don't believe they legally can. My understanding is that as far as the law goes you dont technically own that stuff anyway and certainly cant legally transfer copies of it, you just bought a non-transferrable licence to play it thats all.
Apple and Amazon can arbitrarily stop providing access to any streamed media anytime they feel like it, even if you bought a licence to play it, so its still not technically yours. Read the licence agreement.
X-wing and Tie Fighter should run fine in DOSBox. That runs on Linux just fine.
I don't think these companies care, nor will they ever.
You underestimate the power of the Disney side ... :-(
My work here is dung.
That stuff you paid for isn't yours to leave to anyone! What are you, some kind of pinko terrorist?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Reread those license agreements, especially for music and digital videos. You can't pass them on to anyone. Heck, those licenses can be terminated at any time for any reason by the publisher.
Death is a reason, but it is more likely that a format change will force your heirs to re-purchase the same content 3-10 more times over their lifetime. Just like we did with records, cassettes, then CDs ...
The only certain way to force your perceieved rights to be retained is to strip all DRM from any content - books, audio, video ASAP and store the content in non-encumbered formats that any device can playback. I am not suggesting that you don't honor the intent of the agreement, just that we shouldn't be forced to purchase the same content more than once for a household and should have the option to pass-on this content to our heirs.
I haven't a clue how to get iTunes content passed to my heirs. Do you?
how do I make sure my children get my iTunes, and amazon movies?
you dont. amazon cloud drive products as well as iTunes are non-transferrable. there is no resale or loaning, or even giving away an ebook for example. Besides, as the standards are rather closed in most cases, you couldnt even if you wanted to. read the terms and conditions.
I have plenty of mp4 movies on my server that will just set itself to admin with no password after I do not log in within a 6 month time frame.
Again, unless they hold the license for these movies, you're only gifting them a visit from the MPAA.
But what about the huge amount spent on digital content every year? What's the best way to make sure your "digital inheritance" gets passed down?"
As a consumer, you're late to the party. the "digital" as you call them contents of your personal life upon which you so openly spend are covered under an inumerable number of intractable license agreements and content restrictions. these are legally binding, force you into arbitration disputes, and come with an army of attorneys ready to turn you into a fine red mist if you so much as dare challenge them outside of it. to make matters worse an estate attorney would be about as useful here as tits on a bishop.
the only answer is to open the formats you have. stop treating the cloud as something designed to help you, and when storing locally plan your data backups. consider a key-based authentication system that your children have access too after your death (yubikey for example) and if you're seriously intent on giving them your movies, consider creating PDF's of the invoices/receipts from amazon.com or itunes from when you purchased the content. bonus points if it can be matched up to a financial statement.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Prof. Gerry Beyer published a paper addressing some of these issues, available online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1879950
I happen to think setting up a revocable trust is the best option, given licensing restraints on digital content. This is only worthwhile with larger asset collections, though. For a more casual transfer, placing identifying information in a safety deposit box passed in the will is probably sufficient. And for minor assets: c'est la vie.
Most of your digital content is legally non-transferable, meaning that if you obey the law, the vast majority of your "digital inheritance" no longer belongs to you. Beyond that, put it all on backup drives. As for online accounts, if you want to keep them, catalogue your user ID and passwords, put them in a letter with your will, and will it to a person of your choosing. Although, if you are like me, you would have also included instructions to continue your FB account with random zombie posts until it is no longer deemed funny.
Don't worry, CISPA will make it all illegal anyway, so we can move on to worrying about more important things in life - making money for corporations and politicians and such.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Ask Bruce Willis about iTunes.
I already ran into this with Steam.
When my sons started getting Steam games as gifts, they were too young for their own account (2004?) - they were 7? 8? so I (I guess, stupidly) applied their games to mine, would log on and let them play.
Over the years, we just kept accumulating games, and applying them to "the house account". We did open an extra account once, so we could multiplayer (I think we have Magicka on that one too.), and then (by accident, since 14 year olds are often more interested in getting "that game" installed than thinking about) a couple more games got installed on that account too.
Now they're 17+ and (obviously) have their own accounts.
Unfortunately, I have games and stuff on my account that are technically theirs...Civ5, Magicka and a ton of expansions, Skyrim, etc. I don't play them, I don't want access to them, etc. I'd love to just xfer them to their account, and be done. But right now we basically have to text each other "Dad, you on steam account (X) tonight, or can I play on it?" because we have my (main) account, our other (house) account, and then each of their accounts.
(I tried to raise this concern earlier here, and the Slashmob attacked me for lying, fabricating the situation, and all sorts of things. Not sure why? But I simply doubt many of these services, and certainly Terms, weren't drafted with a 10+ year timeframe expected. Now I am paying the price for not thinking it through, either.)
-Styopa
Give the kids a disk each with the personal media (pictures, family videos etc). Do not care about the digital medial If your kids are like mine, they really do not care about my stuff. They are building their own collections. Let us face it: What is valuable to us is of no value to the kids. If it is, they would have taken a copy a long time ago.
I wrote a journal entry about this in 2006 and it was on the front page but that discussion seems to have been lost to the ages.
And isn't *that* ironic? Don't you think....?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
When you die, the books that you've borrowed indefinitely go back to the library you borrowed them from, not your daughter!
You don't own your digital items, so there's nothing to bequeath. It goes back to the Library (or Apple, or whoever you "rent-indefinitely-but-dont-actually-own" 'ed it from).
Hi Ron-l-j, I have been working on Lifemap @ https://www.milifemap.com/ for a few years after a death in the family and other *real life* issues that affect families but are currently unsolved for by the web. We're in public beta and would invite you to check it out and welcome any and all feedback to improve upon the experience. A Lifemap is the most comprehensive personal digital archive for permanently organizing your meaningful memories into a life story and legacy. Families can now securely and intuitively organize, archive, enjoy and share the stories of their lives while curating a lasting legacy of love and life. Here is our demo video on YouTube that introduces Lifemap: http://youtu.be/tzp9ZT6xIFs We have the ability to appoint an eBeneficiary to inherit your Lifemap and a curated story of your life. We have a deep roadmap but are only focused on self-generated content & a family's emotional assets for the time-being. Hope you check us out! Thank you for your time, Denim
The reason my generation didn't like our parents' music is because it wasn't really all that good.
I find that to be a pretty insulting statement. I was born in the early 80s, like some of the music of the 60s, hate 85% of the music of the 70s & 80s, enjoyed the 'alternative' movement of the 90s immensely and was sad to see it mostly peter out into boy bands and crap-pop in the early 2000s.
I listen to all genres - rock, country, jazz, classical, folk, electronica, metal, you name it -- but you know what my favorite music is, by far? 20s-40s jazz/pop. Sure, there was plenty of bad music then too, but overall the time presented a quality of lyrics and melody not seen before or since. There's a reason so many artists keep on remaking the 'standards.' Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Carmichael, Mercer, Kern, Rogers & Hart.
I can't stand crappy songs (which especially make up most of today's pop efforts) that are nothing but a chorus repeated 20 times with an additional verse or two tacked on to string them together.
Here's how --> http://myownlastwords.com/
Try to get past dvd's and such. All the stuff, be it financial or otherwise (bank accounts, 401(k)'s, insurance policies), is to get to your heirs or be there in case you need it. Our families do not have all the details, and our advisors are even farther back. What if you have that bus accident you've been fearing, and are in a coma? We are so quick to assume the only answer is personal/digital or shoebox. There is a new service, Heir Atlas, that collates your list of stuff, your list of trusted individuals, and advisors as well. Account numbers for "traditional" assets (i.e. bank accounts and policies) are unnecessary. As sharp as we think we are, we won't be updating digital mediums as aggressively when we're 87. Do the right thing and go to heiratlas.com. It's going to be free shortly, if not already.
It seems like you're operating under the assumption that digital inheritance of goods you've purchased a license to will pass to an heir the same way a physical item would. I'd be willing to bet Apple, Amazon and the content owners have a different view on that. If I'm not mistaken, when you purchase a movie from a service such as iTunes, you're not actually purchasing it, you're paying for a non-transferable license for personal use. Before you start asking questions about how to make sure the transfer of ownership takes place, I would first start with the more basic question of do you even have the option of transferring ownership upon your death.
What do do with the 10,000 pornographic movies I hoarded behind the Great Firewall of China? I feel a bit like Noah Levenstein, in that my nephews and grandsons might be grateful but the rest of the familiy should never know about their ancestor's stash.
-- Jimtown Kelly