Dispute Continues Over Posthumous Yahoo! Mail 390
XPisthenewNT points out BBC coverage of the earlier-mentioned dispute between Yahoo! and the family of Justin Ellsworth. An excerpt: "Police sergeant John Ellsworth has sparked a privacy debate in the U.S. that has prompted many to reconsider who can access their e-mail. Mr. Ellsworth is locked in a legal fight with Yahoo! after his son, L/Cpl Justin Ellsworth, a U.S. marine serving in Falluja, was killed by a roadside bomb."
Sparked a privacy debate in the US? (Score:0, Informative)
my guess (Score:3, Informative)
the family will need to prove that the yahoo mail account is property, and as such becomes part of your estate when you die, so you can will it to someone. what happens to property that's not in your will when you die?
i think yahoo is just covering up that they already dleted the account, honestly.
How about his will (Score:3, Informative)
Not just email (Score:3, Informative)
If you have a safe deposit box in your name only, and you die, until the courts approve of your estate's executor, nobody will be able to get to the contents of that box - so think twice about putting anything in a safe deposit box that would be needed by your survivors within a month or less of your demise.
Re:Sparked a privacy debate in the US? (Score:2, Informative)
I tend to grant Yahoo! the benefit of the doubt on this one. If the man had wanted the contents of his email box to be disclosed to his family, he would (or should) have made arrangements to do so.
Re:Reminds me... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not just email (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Value (Score:4, Informative)
On the other basis for this, is that the son was keeping a journal/log using the email that he (the son) was saving. He wanted them to stay around and told his father about this. That is why he is trying to get access to the emails.
Porn Buddies (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Yahoo Terms of Service (Score:2, Informative)
Posting a copyright notice is the equivalent of posting a "private poroperty" sign. The property was already private, you're just letting folks know it.
Re:Not just email (Score:3, Informative)
In the posting, it doesn't seem to show a family dispute, only the reluctance of Yahoo to give over the e-mails.
Re:The heirs should *not* get the emails (Score:3, Informative)
To further blow away your "e-mail = mail" misconception, read about your employer's ability to snoop through your e-mail [inc.com]. Opening somebody else's mail is a crime, but e-mail lacks this protection.
Let us not forget the other parties involved, either... Everybody who sent him e-mail, or received e-mail from him, also has a right to privacy. This right will be violated if Yahoo gives the family access to those e-mails.
The yahoo account is not property. (Score:4, Informative)
The copyright in the emails authored by the deceased is owned by the deceased's estate. Yahoo happens to own media on which a copy of the emails is stored.
The deceased has no right to access the copy of the material on Yahoo's media without Yahoo's permission. Yahoo gave the deceased permission to access the material on their media for a limited term, which ended with the deceased's death.
Owning the copyright in a particular material does not give someone the right to look at copies of that material on other people's media. If it did, the RIAA could force you to let them listen to your CD's. If the record company has a huge fire and all their copies of their copywritten material burns to a crisp, they can't compel someone else with a copy of that material to give them access to it.
In this case, the only thing the copyright ownership gives the estate the right to do is demand that Yahoo delete the copies of the email from their servers. And it CERTAINLY doesn't give them the right to look at emails in the account authored by other people which the estate does not have copyright ownership of.
If the deceased's estate has the right to access the deceased's account because they own the copyrights in the email, than any publisher would be able to look at any copy of anything they publish, which is obviously not the case. If the deceased's estate has the right to access the deceased's account because of the agreement between the deceased and Yahoo, then clauses which terminate a contract at one of the party's deaths would have to be invalid, which is also not the case.
No one has the right to access anyone else's property. It doesn't matter if the agreement between Yahoo and the deceased eliminated the "right" of the deceased's estate to access Yahoo's media - that right never existed in the first place. The estate has to prove that Yahoo agreed to give them that right, which they can not.