Thursday, June 26, 2014
Quick answer: Whoever has your username and password will have them.
How to do it? Reality is you don’t need to leave all passwords to your kids. Because all accounts are linked to e-mails, for safety and marketing reasons. You just need to make sure you leave the password for the email where all your accounts are used for receiving information, and whoever “inherits” it can use “forget password” to reset the password for himself/herself. One more thing to be sure: you list all usernames; many usernames are your email address, but some are not.
For all curious bees, now let’s talk about the quotation mark on "inherit".
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| photo by Sheila Sund |
Currently in 2014 June, the law hasn't caught up with this 21st century digital world yet.
The game rules run by Amazon.com and Apple are that they grant the nontransferable right to users under that fine print we never bother to read, and we agree to it for everything when we purchase digital materials from them.
What is the “nontransferable” right?
Think about this…
In the old days, we could pass our assets such as books, films or records to whoever we wanted. Under the law, we owned physical copies of books, films, and records, and so we could give away physical copies of those copyrighted materials. Actually, heirs didn't inherit the contents of books, films or records; instead, what they received were physical objects which happened to have copyrighted materials on them.
As for digital media, we no longer own physical copies, but we are allowed to use those contents virtually. However, those are copyrighted materials, regulated by copyright laws. And by copyright laws, we are not allowed to pass on those materials.
Amazone.com and Apple are mainly acting as kind librarians who lend those materials to us. We all know that we can read the book from the library, but we can't give the library book to others.
Wow, so what now?
We all know how this country works. Let’s wait until someone sues Amazon.com or Apple over this inheritance issue. By that time the supreme court will work out the rule.
Before that, leave your usernames and passwords to your heirs.
Read related article: Type Your Personal Info and Passwords, Personally. (Posting Soon)
Now, you can either read the related articles, or share this page. Then get up and enjoy your life.
