The Complicated Case of Passing On Your Digital Estate
The Complicated Case of Passing On Your Digital Estate
数字遗产传承的复杂性
When a loved one dies, who downloads their important files from their cloud storage account? Who monitors their email inbox? Who decides what happens to the photos and videos on their social media accounts? And what if those tasks fall to you? 当亲人离世时，谁来从他们的云存储账户中下载重要文件？谁来监控他们的电子邮箱？谁来决定他们社交媒体账户上的照片和视频该如何处理？如果这些任务落到你头上，该怎么办？
Everyone will die, but not everyone has planned what they want to happen with their digital assets after they’re gone. Even when someone makes a plan, survivors might still be limited in what they can do. 每个人终有一死，但并非每个人都为自己身后的数字资产规划好了去向。即便有人做了规划，生者在处理这些资产时仍可能受到诸多限制。
Tying up loose ends can become a nightmare for the living, especially when the volume of digital assets is enormous. Still, the more you know, the better you can plan for your own digital estate, and the easier it will be to manage someone else’s. 处理这些遗留问题对生者来说可能是一场噩梦，尤其是当数字资产数量庞大时。不过，了解得越多，你就越能为自己的数字遗产做好规划，也就能更轻松地管理他人的数字遗产。
Take Inventory
盘点资产
The biggest determining factor in how much work it’s going to be to manage the online accounts and digital assets of someone who is incapacitated or deceased is whether they did any estate planning. If a person doesn’t write down what digital assets they have and what they want done with them, it’s impossible for anyone to know. 管理丧失行为能力者或逝者的在线账户和数字资产需要耗费多少精力，最大的决定因素在于他们是否进行了遗产规划。如果一个人没有写下自己拥有哪些数字资产以及希望如何处理它们，其他人将无从知晓。
It’s not always a simple matter of memorializing a Facebook account or downloading photos from iCloud either. Digital assets can have as much monetary value as sentimental value. Say a person’s social media accounts earn dividends. How will a beneficiary collect future proceeds? And should they keep the account alive? 这也不仅仅是纪念一个 Facebook 账户或从 iCloud 下载照片那么简单。数字资产既有情感价值，也可能具有货币价值。假设某人的社交媒体账户能产生收益，受益人该如何领取未来的款项？他们又是否应该维持该账户的存续？
What about cryptocurrency? If it’s stored in a private wallet and no one has the key, the money is lost forever. It’s a different story, however, if a third party, like Coinbase or PayPal, holds the crypto. At present, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are considered “digital assets” and thus need to be treated that way when doing any estate planning. 加密货币又该怎么办？如果它存储在私人钱包中且无人拥有密钥，这笔钱将永远丢失。但如果由 Coinbase 或 PayPal 等第三方持有，情况则不同。目前，比特币和其他加密货币被视为“数字资产”，因此在进行任何遗产规划时，都需要将其纳入考量。
Navigating the Law
法律导向
In the US, digital inheritance is overseen by state law, the same as traditional probate and estate matters, according to Benjamin Orzeske, chief counsel at the Uniform Law Commission. He and his organization developed a state law known as the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which has been enacted in 48 states, Washington, DC, and the US Virgin Islands. The missing two states are Massachusetts, where RUFADAA has been adopted but not yet enacted as of this writing, and Louisiana, which went its own way with a similar but different law. 统一法律委员会（Uniform Law Commission）首席法律顾问本杰明·奥泽斯克（Benjamin Orzeske）表示，在美国，数字遗产继承由州法律监管，与传统的遗嘱认证和遗产事务相同。他和他的组织制定了一项名为《修订后的统一受托人访问数字资产法》（RUFADAA）的州法律，该法案已在 48 个州、华盛顿特区和美属维尔京群岛颁布。尚未实施的两个州是马萨诸塞州（截至本文撰写时已采纳但尚未颁布）和路易斯安那州（该州通过了一项类似但不同的法律）。
“At the heart of RUFADAA is this recognition that digital property is in some ways different from traditional, tangible property,” Orzeske says. He gives the example of mail versus email. When a person dies, their mail gets forwarded to a dedicated person, the fiduciary, who then receives incoming communication, bills, and payments. If they get a bill in the mail for a magazine subscription, they know to cancel it. Receiving the mail effectively gives the person appropriate information and access to manage the deceased’s accounts and estate going forward. Email is different. The fiduciary doesn’t just get new incoming mail. They might also have access to a searchable history of communication, which the deceased person might have expected to be kept private. “RUFADAA 的核心在于承认数字财产在某些方面不同于传统的有形财产，”奥泽斯克说。他以信件与电子邮件为例：当一个人去世时，他们的信件会被转发给指定的受托人，受托人随后会收到往来通讯、账单和付款。如果他们收到一份杂志订阅账单，他们就知道要取消它。接收信件实际上为受托人提供了管理逝者账户和遗产所需的适当信息和权限。但电子邮件则不同，受托人不仅会收到新的来信，还可能访问可搜索的通讯历史记录，而逝者可能希望这些记录保持私密。
The real point of conflict, according to Orzeske, lies in the Stored Communications Act, a federal law that says companies that handle our online assets can’t release them without our permission. So RUFADAA gives survivors some rights while retaining the original asset holder’s privacy. 奥泽斯克认为，真正的冲突点在于《存储通讯法》（Stored Communications Act），这是一项联邦法律，规定处理我们在线资产的公司在未经我们许可的情况下不得泄露这些资产。因此，RUFADAA 在保留原始资产持有人隐私的同时，赋予了生者一定的权利。
Under RUFADAA, a named trusted person can close accounts, but they can only get the contents—meaning the bodies of emails, private messages, videos, photos, attachments, and so forth—if the decedent specifically “grants the authority to the personal representative fiduciary,” according to Catherine Hodder, a senior attorney editor at FindLaw. FindLaw is an informational website that breaks down legal issues for a general audience. FindLaw 的高级律师编辑凯瑟琳·霍德（Catherine Hodder）表示，根据 RUFADAA，指定的受托人可以关闭账户，但只有在逝者明确“授予个人代表受托人权限”的情况下，他们才能获取账户内容——即电子邮件正文、私人信息、视频、照片、附件等。FindLaw 是一个为大众解析法律问题的资讯网站。
The way to give that permission to a trusted person is to write it down, preferably in a will or similar document. Name the person and exactly what you want them to have, but do not list usernames or passwords, Hodder warns, because “the will is a public document.” 霍德提醒，授予受托人权限的方法是将其写下来，最好是在遗嘱或类似文件中。写明受托人的姓名以及你希望他们拥有的具体权限，但不要列出用户名或密码，因为“遗嘱是一份公开文件”。
If the fiduciary is not given express permission to receive the contents of a digital asset, they might still be able to get a “catalog” of metadata, says Orzeske. Using email as an example again, that could include all the times and dates that emails were sent and received, maybe information about the sender or recipient, but still not the body of emails. 奥泽斯克说，如果受托人没有获得接收数字资产内容的明确许可，他们可能仍然可以获得元数据的“目录”。再次以电子邮件为例，这可能包括所有邮件发送和接收的时间和日期，或许还有关于发件人或收件人的信息，但仍然不包括邮件正文。
The Shortcomings of Built-In Tools
内置工具的局限性
Many of the big tech companies that hold our digital assets, called “data custodians” in the law, have built-in tools that let you assign a trusted person to access your account when you die or if you become incapacitated. 许多持有我们数字资产的大型科技公司（法律上称为“数据保管人”）都内置了工具，允许你在去世或丧失行为能力时，指定一名受托人访问你的账户。
Google has offered its Inactive Account Manager since 2013. Apple and Meta use the term “legacy contact” in some places, although you have to look for “memorialization” in Instagram. Enabling these features may seem like the easiest way to pass on your accounts, but in practice, the features leave much to be desired. 谷歌自 2013 年起就提供了“闲置账户管理器”。苹果和 Meta 在某些地方使用“遗产联系人”（legacy contact）一词，尽管在 Instagram 上你需要寻找“纪念”（memorialization）选项。启用这些功能似乎是传承账户最简单的方法，但在实践中，这些功能仍有许多不足之处。
For example, if you want to give someone permission to download your Instagram content after you die, that person must also have an Instagram account. More importantly, someone must still reach out to Instagram to declare that a person has died in the first place. And how do you do that? 例如，如果你想授权某人在你去世后下载你的 Instagram 内容，该人也必须拥有 Instagram 账户。更重要的是，必须有人先联系 Instagram 声明某人已经去世。而你该如何做到这一点呢？
Mike Kiser, a co-chair of the Death in the Digital Estate Community Group at the OpenID Foundation, points out that “there is no defined way to tell a provider that someone has died or lost capacity.” His group has the long-term goal of developing protocols and guidance for users to be able to manage their digital estates. OpenID 基金会“数字遗产中的死亡”社区小组的联合主席迈克·凯瑟（Mike Kiser）指出，“目前还没有明确的方法来告知服务提供商某人已经去世或丧失了行为能力。”他的小组的长期目标是制定协议和指南，使用户能够管理自己的数字遗产。
Other hurdles and unforeseen problems crop up on a case-by-case basis. What happens if you never gave your real name or real date of birth to any of these companies? How can your trusted contact prove that an online account was actually held by you? 其他障碍和不可预见的问题也会因具体情况而出现。如果你从未向这些公司提供过真实姓名或出生日期怎么办？你的受托人如何证明某个在线账户确实属于你？
Even DIY Solution Can End in Failure
自助方案也可能以失败告终
Tech-savvy people have long hacked together do-it-yourself solutions for passing on… 精通技术的人长期以来一直在拼凑各种自助方案来传承……