Dead Marine's E-Mail Raises Legal Issues
MrPepper11
Dead Marine's E-Mail Raises Legal Issues
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DETROIT (AP) -- Yahoo Inc. may have resolved its dispute with a family
over accessing the e-mail account of a Marine killed in Iraq, but legal
experts say such conflicts are bound to be more common as e-mail
becomes a crucial component of our lives.
John Ellsworth sought his son's e-mails after Lance Cpl. Justin
Ellsworth was killed Nov. 13 while inspecting a bomb in Iraq. But the
father didn't know his son's password, and Yahoo said it couldn't break
its confidentiality agreement with the Marine.
The family was granted access this week after an Oakland County probate
judge ordered Yahoo to do so. Yahoo had said all along that it would
comply with any such order.
Henry H. Perritt Jr., a professor and expert in cyberlaw at the
Chicago-Kent College of Law, said he knows of no other case where
battles over a dead person's e-mail have gone to court, but he expects
to see more.
"I think that as it is now, the service providers for the most part
just hand it over when they've established death and that someone is
the administrator of the estate," Perritt said Thursday. "But they are
really just beginning to think about this."
Other e-mail service providers, including America Online Inc.,
EarthLink Inc., and Microsoft Corp., which runs Hotmail, have
provisions for transferring accounts upon proof of death and identity
as next of kin. AOL says it gets dozens of such requests a day.
Yahoo's policy, however, states that accounts terminate at death.
Yahoo said it has complied with court orders in a handful of similar
situations, but has not changed its policies on privacy.
"We are pleased that the court has issued an order resolving this
matter, satisfying Mr. Ellsworth's request as representative of his
son's estate, and allowing Yahoo to continue to uphold our privacy
commitment to our users," spokeswoman Mary Osako said.
John Ellsworth had argued that his son would have wanted him to have
the account. The Marine told his dad that kind e-mails kept him going,
and his family wanted to make a scrapbook out of them.
His father now is wading through them -- along with spam from mortgage
companies and online dating services -- and says there are hundreds of
encouraging letters from people his son didn't even know.
"It's a great comfort," Ellsworth told Detroit radio station WJR.
The Sunnydale, Calif., company's willingness to work with the family
isn't surprising considering that many Internet service providers still
are trying to figure out the best way to handle such situations, said
Julie E. Cohen, a professor of cyberlaw and intellectual property at
Georgetown University Law Center.
Though e-mails are akin to medical and financial records that executors
routinely access to administer the estates of the deceased, Cohen said,
service providers may have been slower to catch up in realizing the
importance of making e-mails available.
Perritt agreed with the family's contention that accessing e-mail is
similar to accessing a safe deposit box.
"I don't see any reason why e-mail should be different from any other
kind of property," he said. "But it's a new twist on an old issue."
Mike S.
Where exactly is Sunnydale, California?
Is it near San Josie .... or it is closer to Polo Alto?
;-)
Wordsmith
should be no problem with releasing the mail to relatives. Jeez.
W : )
Williams
Wordsmith wrote:
> Once it is obvious a person is really most sincerely dead (!) there
> should be no problem with releasing the mail to relatives. Jeez.
'death certificate' is a nobrainer... but what is the legal proof of
'next of kin'??
and what is the legal proof that the deceased was the 'owner' of the
email account? - most people sign up for yahoo/hotmail using fictitious
info....
Williams
Wordsmith
W : )
Larry Bud
MrPepper11 wrote:
> April 22, 2005
> Dead Marine's E-Mail Raises Legal Issues
> By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
>
> DETROIT (AP) -- Yahoo Inc. may have resolved its dispute with a
family
> over accessing the e-mail account of a Marine killed in Iraq, but
legal
> experts say such conflicts are bound to be more common as e-mail
> becomes a crucial component of our lives.
Moral of the story: Don't save emails with porn or mistresses in them.
keith
> Via legal channels, of course. Sorry if I didn't make that explicit.
>
Sure, and that's exactly what happened, at least as I read it. Likely
Yahoo didn't want to get in the middle. Once the corts ordered them to
turn it over, they were off the hook.
--
Keith