Law Lags Behind Technology When It Comes To Digital Assets

This is not an uncommon topic for this blog. In particular, I have previously discussed the situation that Mr. Ricky Rash and his wife Diane Rash found themselves in following the suicide of their son. Mr. and Mrs. Rash attempted to gain access to their son’s Facebook account to gain some insight and hopefully some answers about why their seemingly normal and happy son would choose to end his life. Unfortunately for his parents, they were not able to gain access their son’s account because of Facebook’s privacy policy. For an in depth discussion about this topic, here is a video from PBS featuring Ms. Naomi Cahn from the George Washington University School of Law and Evan Carroll, a co-author of the book Your Digital Afterlife with Jeffrey Brown.

See Jeffrey Brown, Naomi Cahn, and Evan Carroll, Law Lags Behind in Defining Posthumous Protocol Online for Online Accounts, PBS Newshour, 2013.