Imran made an interesting comment on my Digital Will post about an American GI, Justin Ellsworth, killed in Iraq whose family was attempting to gain access to his Yahoo e-mail account. A court has just ruled that Yahoo should hand over the password details to give the family access. There has been a lot of blogging and forum posting on this decision - most that seem to have missed the fact that the email account was apparently being used as a journal - about the rights and wrongs of this. Most opinion seems to be that email is private and as such the next-of-kin has no rights over it. I tend towards suggesting that awarding access to next of kin to things like flickr accounts makes sense - email however is a tricky one. If the case was won in this specific instance because the contents of the account were actually journal entries that Ellsworth had displayed every intention of sharing with his family then the ruling seems fair, but I can see the worries of those concerned about p...
Bone fide cyber punk