
Who inherits your iTunes library when you die? - awwstn2
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-08-23/finance/33336852_1_digital-content-digital-files-apple-and-amazon
======
esonderegger
Since I'm most of the way done with the work of being the executor for my
mother's estate (she died about a year ago), hopefully I can provide some
perspective here.

As a practical matter, a laptop and any software purchased for it gets put as
a single line item on an estate appraisal for personal effects. Our appraiser
certainly didn't want to boot up the laptop and examine its contents for
valuable files. The only times I've turned on that laptop in the past year
have been to look for clues about financial documents, look for pictures to
use at her funeral, and to make sure I had a backup of her phd thesis.

Personally, I'm thankful that digital assets are non-transferrable because in
my case, no one would have wanted them, and it allows me to feel no guilt
about not putting them on an estate tax return.

Also, digital media are not the only non-transferrable assets that can
potentially belong to an estate. Season tickets to sporting events and vehicle
registrations come to mind, but I'm sure there are others.

I guess the question comes down to: if Apple allowed you to buy transferable
licenses to music in the iTunes store at $1.50/song and non-transferable
licenses at $1.00/song, which would you buy? I suspect the overwhelming
majority of Americans would choose the $1.00 non-transferable license. Also, I
suspect estate planning would almost never enter into that decision making
process.

Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If there
had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have been easy
to transfer it.

~~~
myko
> Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If
> there had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have
> been easy to transfer it.

With iTunes music sure. What about TV shows and movies? Books?

~~~
gnu8
I would simply have the probate judge order Apple to transfer the DRMed files
to the party inheriting the files.

------
rickmb
The problem once again is copyright. If copyright hadn't been in the way,
there would no DRM, and plenty of neutral services to solve this problem.

Right now, if you can't even freely share stuff between the living in your own
household, you don't really "own" it, and you can forget about a way to pass
it on to your heirs.

You don't own stuff you merely rent, and you can forget about passing it on.

~~~
snowwrestler
Why would anyone put in years to write a novel if a big printing house could
just copy the text and sell it for their own profit, cutting out the author.
This would be the world without any copyright at all.

This is clearly a problem that needs to be worked on, and people are working
on it. But the answer is not the elimination of copyright.

~~~
Frozenlock
You could swap `book' and `author' with `code' and `programmer' and you get
the open source model.

What about passion? Sense of accomplishment?

Perhaps the author could make money on book signing, interviews, or even
donations. Writing a good story could open doors to writing a movie
scenario...

To be honest I don't really care how the authors can get some revenues, nor
the programmers.

Data must be free, and this is far more important than how someone can make
money on it.

~~~
kscaldef

        You could swap `book' and `author' with `code' and `programmer' and you get the open source model.
    

Except that typically programmers write open source code which they then use
directly themselves to do other things they want to do. An author probably
doesn't get much pleasure or utility out of reading their own book.

    
    
        Writing a good story could open doors to writing a movie scenario...
    

Except that presumably you want that to be given away for free too.

    
    
        Data must be free, and this is far more important than how someone can make money on it.
    

A book is not "data".

~~~
k-mcgrady
Can't agree with this enough. I think most people believe that there is a need
for copyright in some form. In it's current form, especially because of the
ridiculous cases of people being sued for millions because they downloaded a
few songs, it's just gotten a bad reputation.

The comparisons to open source software never do much to convince me. Many
people think that it is a good model and make money through it sure, but I
believe commercial software makes more money and that money is easier made
(for example money from a sale instead of money from support seems much easier
to do and scale).

The digital music space has been improving (iTunes has been DRM free for a
while now) and it's hopefully going to get better - probably as more of the
old media people retire and the companies enter the control of people who have
grown up with digital content. The only way things will move forward is if
both sides compromise but the mentality some people have of 'I want it now, I
want it in the format I want, and I want it free' doesn't do much to convince
music/movie/book companies. It makes them want to lock things down tighter,
not open them up.

~~~
Frozenlock
" Many people think that it is a good model and make money through it sure,
but I believe commercial software makes more money and that money is easier
made..."

Making money out of it is irrelevant.

Whether or not you can copy a file is a moral question, and this has a higher
priority than how to make a business model out of it.

You can't argue about if something is good by checking if you can easily build
a business around it.

I will take an extreme example here (just so we get out of the copyright
environment): What if I want to make money by kidnapping children? I believe I
could make a descent living out of it (especially if I have some kind of law
on my side). However this 'business' aspect is never considered, because it
doesn't pass the morality check, and thus is irrelevant.

I know it's an extreme example, but this shows there's a hierarchy when we
need to determine if something is acceptable. Making money ISN'T among the
firsts.

I'm not saying you can't make money without copyrights, but it simply can't be
an argument.

------
dfxm12
The problem isn't with laws dealing with a person's estate, it is with the
TOS/EULA of the devices & stores that play & sell digital media. According to
Amazon, simply giving someone my Kindle does give them the "right" to read the
books contained in it. This is just too hard to enforce for the Amazons and
Apples of the world to do anything about it (right now).

Are people only realizing now that the game has changed? This was obvious from
day one: stores selling digital goods have it in their best interest to keep
you buying the same thing over and over again, whether you buy the Playstation
game you already own on PSN, or you have your buddy "buy" an album on iTunes
because you can't let him borrow the CD.

Theoretically, this loss of convenience/utility should lower the price for the
consumer. It is really up to the market to decide if they want to save a few
bucks, or retain the right of first sale (or gift, in this case).

------
whichdan
Another point to consider: Let's say a CD weighs half an ounce, or, roughly 30
CDs per pound. 10,000 CDs would weigh over 330 lbs (feel free to correct me).
Storing and transferring 330 lbs of CDs -and- keeping them in good condition,
-and- justifying that if you've already ripped them to MP3 seems like a pain
in the ass, especially over 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. And on the same note,
ripping 10,000 CDs or even a portion of that would take weeks. And that's
assuming CDs are still relevant in 20 years.

So if you're like my and consider CDs to be unreasonable, what other options
do we have? If I have kids someday, I would certainly want to be able to pass
down my music collection.

And, for the last point: What happens to our licenses if/when Amazon or Apple
cease to exist?

(Side note: I'm comparing 10k CDs to 10k Books, because 10k Songs is vastly
smaller than 10k Books.)

~~~
robfig
Buy CDs and rip them.

~~~
whichdan
Right, but you still have to keep the CD as proof that you own it.

~~~
sneak
No you don't.

~~~
whichdan
So, lets say I bought 100 CDs, ripped them, destroyed the CDs, and then
somehow the RIAA says that I don't legally own those MP3s.

What happens?

~~~
rm999
It's up to them to prove you did anything wrong, which they won't be able to.
The RIAA only targets people who illegally distribute digital media (something
they can prove).

------
fjorder
Unless you are currently very old or very ill I seriously doubt that even you
yourself will be able to access your iTunes library by the time you're on your
deathbed. The funny thing is that you probably won't care either.

As successful as iTunes and Apple currently are, media distribution is still
undergoing massive disruption. It's likely that something completely new and
utterly amazing compared to any current online media store will win out in the
end. Distribution services that provide a sub-par experience on the majority
of hardware out there are doomed to fail even sooner. i.e. iTunes does not
provide a good user experience under anything but OSX, and even there it's
love/hate. Amazon and Google Play are serious contenders despite the
artificial iOS obstacles Apple is heaping in their paths.

One might argue that iTunes will live on even if other stores win out, but
legacy support only goes so far. Once iTunes stops making Apple money they'll
wait a respectful period of time and then quietly shut everything down.

I know many will disagree with me on iTunes' fate, but all I have to do is to
live long enough and I'm virtually guaranteed to have the last laugh!

------
JoeAltmaier
Where does you library go when you change devices? Aren't tunes licensed to a
particular device? Which would make it different from Kindle for instance,
where your license is in the cloud, and content accessible from any
authenticated device.

~~~
whichdan
As far as I know, both iTunes and Amazon files are DRM-free, which would
inherently imply that they aren't tied to a machine.

iTunes: m4a, has your name and email address encoded

Amazon: mp3, has Amazon's unique song id in the ID3 comments

And in terms of the cloud:

iTunes: $25/yr for iTunes Match, which is completely optional

Amazon: Free storage for songs you purchase from Amazon + 5gb extra

The important issue is to keep your music backed up, since both Amazon and
iTunes offer limited options if your harddrive fails.

Anyway, to address your point, Dropbox or a manual file transfer would be your
best bet for multi-device support.

~~~
vondur
It's true for music, which is now DRM free, but not so for E-books and digital
video. Those are all DRM'd. (for both Amazon, Apple, and I'm going to guess
for the Google Play store as well.

~~~
MrMember
It's what's keeping me from joining the ebook revolution. I'd love to be able
to impulse buy a book and have it 'delivered' instantly, but instead I'm stuck
buying the physical version and waiting for it to be delivered.

~~~
dripton
I was in the same boat until last fall, when I finally caved and bought a
Kindle. I hate DRM too, but at least Kindle's DRM is easy to crack, so you
have a way out of Amazon's walled cesspool if you need it. (I haven't needed
it so far, since the Kindle is my favorite mobile reading device and Kindle
Cloud Reader works in Linux. But if Kindle's DRM were stronger, I never would
have bought one.)

------
cletus
The problem here is that the content industry wants to have their cake and eat
it too (quelle surprise).

Take ebooks as a much simpler example. The distribution costs of a single
ebook are essentially zero. Even if you, as a publisher, pay Apple/Amazon 30%
you're better off than retail and retail typically has a higher markup, means
printing books, storing them in warehouses, shipping them across the
country/world, etc.

On top of this ebooks are basically nontransferable whereas paper books can of
course been sold secondhand. The latter is such a "problem" that the textbook
industry, as just one example, will keep changing editions each year or two
just to kill the secondhand market.

It should come as no surprise that ebooks are nontransferable either.

Given all these restrictions and lower costs of production it seems logical
that ebooks should be cheaper than their dead tree equivalents. But oh no,
they're typically the same price or even more expensive. This is nothing but
greed. What's more, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot (long term)
here because they should be encouraging a system whereby you can buy a given
textbook, it can't be sold secondhand and the original owner keeps getting
updates (people don't typically rebuy later editions of the same textbook I
would guess).

Music isn't really that different. CDs, which are transferable, have the same
costs of printing, storage, distribution and retail markup, even against the
30% (is this confirmed for music?) margin Apple/Amazon take yet I don't think
you'll be saving any money by buying whole MP3 albums vs CDs (more often than
not).

If electronic media were cheaper _like it should be_ I think consumers would
have an easier time accepting the nontransferability aspect. People, on the
whole, have an innate sense of _fairness_ (IMHO).

As far as iTunes accounts and the like go, on a practical level you can simply
take over the account. Apple has a facility to change the Apple ID. I can't
see any barriers to this.

EDIT: From [1]:

 _Traditional publishing has a traditional formula for calculating the retail
list price, the price printed on the book. That list price is typically about
eight times the cost of manufacturing. In clothing retail terms, that
translates into a markup of about 88% between publisher and reader._

 _There are several reasons for the big percentage. Not only does the actual
bookseller require a markup, but often there are two “middlemen” between the
publisher and the bookstore: a distributor and a wholesaler who must each get
a piece of the action. And of course the publisher wants to make a profit and
better not sell merely for the cost of manufacturing._

which basically confirms the 12% figure. But I was referring to the retail
markup and costs of distribution (distributor/wholesaler).

[1]: [http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices-
discounts-...](http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices-discounts-
markups.html)

~~~
scott_s
I think you overestimate the physical cost of books. From
<http://michaelhyatt.com/why-do-ebooks-cost-so-much.html>, "Second, physical
manufacturing and distribution expenses cost less than you think. Some people
assume that these two items represent the bulk of a book’s costs. They don’t.
Together, they account for about 12% of a physical book’s retail price."

~~~
graeme
Aye. I'm publishing a book soon. By using Lightning Source to list on Barnes
and Noble, I can make amazon discount my book, which doesn't affect my
createspace royalty. I should be able to have the book sell at $26, and keep
$21.

~~~
alanfalcon
I'm not so sure that you'll get the results you're aiming for there. Do you
have links to a source that has successfully carried off this plan?

~~~
graeme
Aaron Shepherd's Plan B (an update to POD for profit).

Selling to B and N with a 55% discount from lightning source should make the
books appear with a 40% discount off the list price. Amazon generally matches
those discounts.

The list price will be $44. 44 * 0.6 = 26.4

Using the Createspace royalty calculator, $44 with a 300 page book produces a
royalty of ~$22.

Amazon discount don't reduce Createspace royalties. I may be overlooking
something, or some part of the plan might fail of course.

<https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/>

------
brudgers
What is intellectually interesting about this is contemplating the ways in
which these issues may interface with the politics surrounding inheritance in
the United States. I suspect to see some strange bedfellows on both sides of
these issues over the long term.

------
msrpotus
Is Apple (or Amazon or Google) really interested in enforcing this? While the
rules might say that kids can't inherit ebooks or songs, I have trouble
believing that they'd actually try to enforce it.

It does raise the broader issue of households, though. When I have a family,
shouldn't I be able to give them access to ebooks I've read and songs I've
enjoyed? That's trivially easy with the physical versions (if sometimes
annoying that someone else is reading a book you want to read) but how will
companies handle the digital equivalent of sharing within a family?

~~~
tjoff
Amazon gives you a way to do this, lend an ebook to someone for x days.
Problem is that the publisher set the terms for lending, meaning they can
disable it altogether and they can set other limitations such as time limits
and that you can only lend them out once etc. Which is kind of sickening.

[http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle...](http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle_Ebooks_)

But I can understand what they are afraid of, in a digital world it would be
trivial to set up a lending service letting users automatically borrow books
from each other. But really, I should be able to lend out to my family,
friends and colleagues for as long and often I want (that I can't read it
myself while it is borrowed and that I can only lend it out to one person at a
time are very reasonable limitations that mimics physical books).

------
francov88
Great article, but i'm not really surprised by the outcome. I mean if kim dot
com is being sued why would you ever expect to be able to save your digital
content for someone else after death?

------
unreal37
Is this surprising to anyone who has an iTunes account?

> “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family > would be OK with
> losing a collection of 10,000 books and > songs,” says Evan Carroll, co-
> author of “Your Digital > Afterlife.”

And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting
Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account to his
favorite granddaughter's account. Or that cool Angry Birds iPhone app he paid
99 cents for back 20 years ago.

~~~
frossie
_And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting
Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account_

I realise young folk think they are immortal, but people don't just die from
old age. And the problem is, digital media companies like Apple and Amazon
don't implement a concept of a "household" account.

I am sure I don't live in the only household where the kids watch stuff from
an iTunes library populated from the account of one parent. Granted if a
parent died the kids' first thought would not be "Drat, no Backyardigans" but
it is definitely an issue beyond bequeathing media that nobody else is
interested in.

An iTunes library may very well be an asset worth hundreds of dollars to
survivors. Even if you know each others' passwords, technically it is still
illegal to keep using the dead person's account.

~~~
unreal37
The example you give is a good point to consider. If the wrong parent dies,
all of the family's digital books, music, movies, tv shows, season passes
(year-long tv subscriptions) get potentially locked up. It's one of the hidden
costs of "renting" our entertainment digitally instead of owning it
physically. I think this needs to be solved - transferable iTunes accounts or
something.

------
csense
As other posters have pointed out, the problem with many DRM schemes is that
there's no guarantee the company will stay in business, or will continue to
host the DRM servers.

In fact, if the DRM'ed stuff you've bought is a one-time purchase (as opposed
to a subscription of some kind), then it's in the provider's economic best
interest to drop support as soon as possible. There's not going to be any more
money coming in from the user once he's made his purchase, but there's going
to be money going out to pay the DRM servers' costs because they consume
physical space, power, bandwidth and technical expertise on an ongoing basis
(as well as hardware that wears out and needs to be replaced).

I personally support as little DRM-crippled content as possible. I only
purchase e-books in open formats, use GamersGate instead of Steam (avoiding
DRM-crippled products), and buy a fair number of physical books and DVD's.
I've actually walked away from imminent purchases, both online and in stores,
when I discovered that the product I was about to purchase had aggressive DRM.

------
robomartin
This is why I don't buy any digital books other than programming books (that
will be irrelevant in decades) and books that, in general, will not survive
the test of time. In other words, none of the library will be of value in a
few decades.

Anything else I still buy physical: books I care about, music, etc. As an
example, if I was after a design-patterns book, I'd buy a physical copy.
Algorithms book? Physical. PHP programming book: digital. The latest "how to
launch your startup book"?: digital. I own CD's for all of my music.

As an electrical engineer I have had the experience of collecting hundreds of
physical data books only to throw them all away years later. That world has
changed completely with the availability of freely downloadable PDF data
sheets and data books. The same is the case with most mechanical components
catalogs and product information books. Open and free websites and/or PDF
files have replaced the world of hard-copy manuals, books and catalogs.

And so the question might very well be: What are other book genres going to
look like in ten, twenty, thirty or fifty years? It could very well be that
book authors discover that they can earn a lot more money if their book is
published digitally and made available openly while being supported by
advertising or donations. While most would reject the idea of a 300 page PHP
book with an add on every header or every page, the idea that this book would
be free to the reader might change their viewpoint.

Catalog or data-book providers have an incentive for providing these book or
documents for free: They are trying to sell you what's inside them. That
transition was a no-brainer. Novels, fiction, business, political, hobby and
other books might not have such strong tie-ins with revenue generating
opportunities. This means that they have to make some money per unit sold (or
unit read). Maybe all books will become websites with advertising and many
opportunities to monetize them. And, at the same time, the reader will have
the option to pay a nominal amount to turn off all advertising.

The idea of transferring ownership of digital assets to survivors might
eventually translate into simply providing a list of the books, songs, etc.
that the survivors can freely explore as a sample of what the deceased like to
read or listen to. In the end, I think only a limited set of physical items
hold sentimental value. As far as real monetary value, well, I think that
books and records hardly count as investments save for very, very rare stuff.

------
rsaarelm
The simplest long-term consumer approach to digital media is to just hold a
list of the titles of the stuff you like, and assume you can download any item
from it at any time if you want access to it. You don't need to worry about
keeping a private multi-gigabyte storage intact and accessible over decades
nor access control and rights management arrangements with a single commercial
entity that might not exist in ten years. Unfortunately for commercial content
providers, this approach is basically equivalent to "pirate everything, all
the time".

------
001sky
This is another reason there was supposed to be an expiratoin date on
copyright. It was never intended to last 120 years and multiple generations,
was it?

------
lambada
I'd love to know what happened to the iTunes library of Steve Jobs when he
died. He undoubtably will have had many purchases of music, books, movies etc.
He was adamant that the physical medium was dead. I would assume that his
library is now unused? Or perhaps he had a single account his whole family
used - which, from my understanding, wouldn't be compliant with the licensing
agreement.

~~~
hyperbovine
I would be surprised if he had time to read, watch movies or listen to music.
It would not surprise me at all to learn that he essentially used iTunes only
for QA.

------
edanm
This simple issue shows the big, huge, _gaping_ problem with the future of
digital media.

In the past, the labls/publishers/whoever wanted to create content, be able to
sell it, and have a monopoly on it. The way to do this was to sell physical
instances of the creation, like books, DVDs, and CDs. This worked wonderfully,
because it's simple for people to understand giving money over to receive a
physical good, which you own, and which you can e.g. later sell, or transfer
to your kids.

In short, the old way was: "buying" == "getting a physical copy of the media".

The problem is, since digital media arose, there has been a slow shift in the
meaning of _buying_ content. The producers are acting like "buying" no longer
means "getting a physical copy of the media". They're acting like it means
"having access to consume the media". E.g., buying a song from Queen means I
get to listen to the song. It has nothing to do with having the physical file.

In other words, the new model is: "buying" == "getting the (legal) ability to
consume the media".

This is true in many ways, both good and bad for the consumer.

The good is that, e.g., when I buy an audiobook on Audible, the physical file
is irrelevant. I can delete it, and download it again. It's my _ability_ to
get the book that they're selling. I can have many physical copies of the
book, on my computer/iPhone/laptop/whatever, and they're fine with it. The bad
is that a lot of the rules for physical media are no longer relevant - I can't
sell it, I can't lend it, I can't let people inherit.

Actually, this doesn't bother me much. Because I don't think of owning an
Audiobook in the same way I think of owning a physical book. My thoughts are
"I pay $10 to hear this book, once". Of course, this says a lot about me,
because I _don't_ have this same thought about ebooks - I _do_ equate them to
physical books.

My prediction is that the world will be going in a direction in which physical
ownership of digital media is irrelevant. This _has_ to happen, because of the
way digital media works. People will be buying the "ability" to listen to
songs, not buying actual songs. Programs like Amazon's "lend books" will be
seem very antiquated and irrelevant. Arguably, the way these will work is by
buying subscriptions to services, i.e. $10 for all the music you can listen to
ala Spotify. I think this is the only way the world can go which will make
sense to consumers, although I fear for the publishers.

------
angry-hacker
Owners of digital products want the same kind of protection like products you
can touch have but they don't want to give anything back. Such as right to
loan, lend or resell their products... it's wrong on so many levels.

(I know Amazon somehow let's you lend books for limited time but I'm talking
about industry in general)

------
iwwr
Webapp idea: cross-reference an iTunes library with mp3s available via torrent
(or ed2k/kad) of similar quality.

~~~
rgsteele
To what end? iTunes music has been DRM free since April 2009:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7813527.stm>

------
slovette
While I do keep an archived copy of my entire 200GB library on the home
server, does this even matter anymore?

Spotify anyone?

Subscription services will eventually win over large locally owned media. It's
so nice to have access to any song I want for $10 /month, without having to
worry if my iPhone has enough storage to hold it all.

------
TheGateKeeper
I remove DRM from everything I purchase.

Who inherits my iTunes library (or kindle library etc etc)? My estate does.

------
Pent
An extension of this is, will we see more wills with login credentials to
different services? Is that even legal to pass down to someone after you die?
For example you include your lastpass/1password account in your will.

~~~
tantalor
It's common for services (e.g., NetFlix, iTunes) to explicitly forbid giving
your passwords to anybody else. I suppose they would enforce this by
cancelling your account (which they can do at any time) when they learn that
you're dead.

------
scotttobejoking
Classic first world problem, right here...

Oh no - I have so much music that a physical storage model doesn't scale - in
fact, I have so. much. music. that I can't afford to own it in physical media!
I can only afford to license it for my lifetime! Whatever shall I do?

This isn't to say that transferable digital assets are unimportant, but just
to point out that part of the reason people in previous generations did not
suffer our terrible woes is that only very few of them tried to accumulate
obscenely large collections. (I have 27 GB of music accumulated - that's 16
days of nonstop music. When I cast my eye over history, I am in the obscenely
wealthy 0.001% (pick a number) who could command over two weeks of nonstop
music on a whim. It's nothing less than obscene.)

If you keep a moderate library, there's nothing wrong with physical media.

~~~
roc
Library size has _nothing_ to do with it. People choose digital for reasons
other than "too many little plastic discs to keep track of".

Digital content enables a certain class of packrat, to be sure. But they're
tangentially relevant, at best.

~~~
scotttobejoking
I wouldn't say that library size is only tangentially relevant. After, all, if
we all had small libraries, we wouldn't be worried about them as a valuable
part of our estate, would we?

You're right, digital media bring all kinds of convenience and portability
that make them valuable forms of media that should be transferable. (More
important is that they should be transferable across formats/devices in time -
I don't think my kids will be able to play my mp3s when I die :-)

But digital media uniquely encourage large library size - they are uniquely
prone to accumulation.

How many times have you seen the following argument made, "If you made it easy
to buy a digital copy legitimately, I wouldn't pirate?" Well, with successful
stores (such as iTunes) the purchasing process has been made extremely easy.

What happens when you have extreme ease of purchase coupled with negligible
storage cost? That's a recipe for inadvertent hoarding if I ever saw one!

Digital media enable us to lose all sense of scale of how much we have
accumulated(because we have no physical objects to haul about. I don't think
it's just a certain class of packrat that suffers, I think we _all_ suffer
from this loss of perspective.

It makes the question of transferability more acute to us, because we're
investing more (money, time, attention) in gathering and consuming media than
we would otherwise. So I stand by my original post - this is a first world
problem :-)

~~~
roc
Value makes them relevant to estate issues.

It seems to me unlikely that digital content will remain the domain of
relatively cheap music, books and videos.

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johnrgrace
I've been pondering exactly this for my current business plan, what's been
clear to me is that this is more of a business/legal issue as opposed to
technology. Oh to sunder the walled gardens.

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ricardobeat
iTunes songs are currently DRM-free. You can just copy the files to wherever
you want, or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for
$25.

That's one battle won, now we need to get rid of DRM for video and ebooks...

~~~
kunil
>or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for $25.

why $25?

~~~
ricardobeat
<http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/>

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Grovara123
Fascinating post - thanks for sharing.

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csense
I'm not a lawyer, but here are the questions I'd ask, which likely have
different answers for different online services, different states, and
different countries:

1\. Are the rights under the EULA / ToS transferable due to terms explicitly
in the EULA governing transferability?

2\. If there are no explicit terms, what is the "default setting" for
transferability?

3\. Are the digital items being sold considered goods, services, or some
combination? (I'd imagine it's much easier to terminate a contract for ongoing
services than to negate heirs' rights to goods the deceased has purchased.)

4\. Is there a catch-all "escape clause" in the EULA which says "We're allowed
to terminate your right to access these songs or movies at any time for any
reason, or no reason"?

5\. What about the first sale doctrine? Doesn't it say that you have some
right to transfer items regardless of what the EULA / ToS says?

From a practical standpoint, you can probably transfer the account by just
giving the password to the receiving heir. Making new purchases on the old
account may no longer be possible if they check to make sure the name on your
credit card matches the name the account is registered to, but I'd imagine
many providers don't do this check and only care about what your CC info says
if they start getting chargebacks.

If you don't know the password and don't have access to the deceased's email
to use the usual password reset mechanism, you may be facing an uphill battle.

It would also be a micromanagement nightmare to have several accounts on the
same service with different content. It might also trigger provider's alarms
if you access several different accounts from the same IP address (although if
the number is reasonably small -- less than ten, let us say -- hopefully
they'll assume it's legit, i.e. multiple accounts belonging to different
people living in the same house with a single NAT'ed Internet connection.)

The simple fact of the matter is that most Web businesses' domain modeling
assumes that customers live forever. What happens when they don't is basically
anarchy. We're still at the point where most of the people who die never had a
large online presence, but in 30-50 years that will no longer be true.

An ideal situation for content providers would be for all content to be
destroyed when someone dies, because then the next generation would have to
buy it if they wanted it instead of inheriting it. The problem is that this
leads to cognitive dissonance, because heritability of possessions is a
central feature of many cultures, including ours.

An ideal situation for consumers is complete transferability. The first
problem is that this encourages piracy -- if there was a free and legal resale
market where any song could be sold for (let us say) $0.50, while songs can be
bought on iTunes for $1.00, iTunes would make exactly $1.00 on each song it
released, because exactly one person would buy it, then resell it (keeping a
local copy), and its buyer would resell it, etc. The second problem is that
it's difficult for a company halfway around the country to differentiate
between the legitimate heir of someone who's actually died and an account
thief.

