All this talk of Bruce Willis suing Apple over iTunes’ Terms and Conditions made me think, “What would happen to your iTunes account and its content if you die?”  Can you actually bequeath your account to your relative, spouse or someone dear to you?  Can you have your lawyer draw up a will that states that you leave your iTunes account to someone specific?  Would that be considered legal even if you take into consideration the current terms and conditions?

As we’ve mentioned in an earlier article, iTunes does in fact allow you to store their products on up to five iTunes accounts legally, however, nothing in the terms of use discuss what would happen to your account when you die.

What actually happens

We usually has someone whom they trust with their life–a person who knows your ATM PIN, your social network password, etc.  This may be a lawyer, a best friend or a member of the family.  So if we die, that friend with all our personal knowledge usually takes over accounts – like closing bank accounts or keeping their social network account alive as a memorial.

But this is actually illegal, as using another person’s identity is considered as identity theft even if you have no intentions of using it maliciously.  But not everyone can afford to get a lawyer to tie up personal matters.  Another thing to be considered, especially when no one knows your account details, this is for online accounts, a person close to the deceased can use a service, such as DeceasedAccount, to close or manage online accounts of their dearly departed.  Or, if the deceased has a Facebook account, loved ones can turn the deceased’s profile into a memorial.  All they need to do is contact Facebook regarding the matter and they’d be happy to assist you in immortalizing the memory of your loved one.

But iTunes is a different matter, as we’re talking about purchased digital content and not just an account.

Rules

When you use a service like iTunes, you agree to the terms and conditions, which, admittedly, very few of us actually read.  This agreement is a contract between the consumer and the service provider.  Contracts specify who is legally allowed to use the service, and for Apple, this is the person who signed up for it.  It cannot be transferred to anyone else.  So when a person dies, the contract expires so no one else can use the service.  Except, like in the case above, you give someone else access to it, but as I’ve said, that’s illegal.

According to the The Electronic Frontier Foundation, “[O]nce you’ve acquired a lawfully-made CD or book or DVD, you can lend, sell, or give it away without having to get permission from the copyright owner. In simpler terms, ‘you bought it, you own it’ (and because first sale also applies to gifts, ‘they gave it to you, you own it’ is also true).

But this applies only to tangible items like books and CDs.  How about your digital collection?

Some argue that the same rule should apply–since you paid for it, you own it.  But as Ed Bott of ZDNet explained, digital content is not the same as physical stuff.  When you buy digital music, you’re only purchasing the right to listen to it, you don’t actually own a copy of it, not like when you buy the physical album.  This allows record labels to put up restrictions to the digital music they supply online.

Apple actually is now more lenient when it come to digital content.  Before, they used digital rights management (DRM) technology to prevent users from burning songs onto CDs and giving those CDs to their friends or for their personal collection.  Now, Apple provides DRM-free files that can be transferred to other devices legally as stated in their terms of use:

(ii) You shall be authorized to use iTunes Products on five iTunes-authorized devices at any time, except for Content Rentals (see below).

(iii) You shall be able to store iTunes Products from up to five different Accounts at a time on compatible devices, provided that each iPhone may sync tone iTunes Products with only a single iTunes-authorized device at a time, and syncing an iPhone with a different iTunes-authorized device will cause tone iTunes Products stored on that iPhone to be erased.

(iv) You shall be authorized to burn an audio playlist up to seven times.

It’s a tricky matter, dealing with the differences between physical and digital content.  But these are the questions that will continue to become important in life and in death.  More of our world is becoming digitized, and the old rules of conduct don’t always apply to our new technology age.

The matter of Bruce Willis’ bequeathment raises an important question, and his celebrity status has incurred a great deal of interest in the matter, only emphasizing the need to evolve our social norms and legal terms in tandem with our technological advancements.