打开电脑,上QQ、MSN,和朋友、同事聊聊天;打开邮箱,看看有没有客户或朋友发来的邮件;在自己的博客上记录所思所感或上各大论坛发贴子表达自己的意见……在这个网络时代,人们的生活与“虚拟的”网络世界已经变得越来越密不可分,网络世界的一些东西也慢慢从虚拟走向现实,对此我们不得不思考:当一个人逝世后,他/她曾使用过的那些在线服务怎么处理呢?
国内中文网络上曾经掀起过一次讨论:“人死了之后,QQ号怎么办?”答案五花八门,有说任其自然的,有说留给后代的。有人对此感叹:不论是谁,最后都会成为别人好友列表里的一个灰色头像……
据了解,我国现行法律法规还没有把QQ、博客、游戏账号等纳入财产范畴。而在国外,“数字遗产”这一议题已经进入人们的视野,并出现了一些相关的通过网络运营的“数字遗产”保管公司,我们不妨一起来了解探讨一下。
文字难度：★★★
Before her 21-year-old daughter died in a 1)sledding accident in early 2007, Pam Weiss had never 2)logged on to [1]Facebook. Back then, social-networking sites were used almost exclusively by the young. But she knew her daughter Amy Woolington, a 3)UCLA student, had an account, so in her grief Weiss turned to Facebook to look for photos. She found what she was looking for and more. She was soon communicating with her daughter’s many friends, sharing memories and even piecing together, through 4)posts her daughter had written, a blueprint of things she had hoped to do. “It makes me feel good that Amy had a positive effect on so many people, and I wouldn’t have had a clue if it hadn’t been for Facebook,” says Weiss.
And she wouldn’t have had a clue if she had waited too long. She managed to copy most of her daughter’s profile in the three months before Facebook 5)took it down.
Like a growing number of grieving relatives, Weiss 6)tapped into one of the most powerful 7)troves of memories available: a loved one’s online presence. As people spend more time at keyboards, there’s less being stored away in dusty attics for family and friends to 8)hang on to. Letters have become e-mails. Diaries have 9)morphed into blogs. Photo albums have turned virtual. The pieces of our lives that we put online can feel as eternal as the Internet itself, but what happens to our virtual identity after we die?
帕姆·维斯从来没有登录过“脸谱网”,直到2007年早些时候,她21岁的女儿在一次滑雪事故中不幸丧生。在那个时候,社交类网站(SNS)的主流用户几乎都是年轻人。但当她知道女儿艾米·沃灵顿(加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校的一名学生在“脸谱网”上有一个帐户后,处在悲伤中的维斯登录了这个网站去找寻女儿的照片。她找到了她所需要的,甚至更多。很快地,她与女儿的许多朋友联系上,分享回忆,看着女儿在网上写下的一些东西,她甚至能拼凑出女儿曾经的梦想蓝图。“看到艾米曾经对这么多人产生过积极的影响,这让我感觉好多了。如果我没有登录‘脸谱网’,根本就不会知道这些。”维斯说。
确实,如果她动作慢一点的话,便难以知道这一切。再过三个月,“脸谱网”就会注销艾米的帐户,而维斯则成功地在这限期内将女儿的大部分资料复制保存了下来。
与越来越多不幸丧亲的人们一样,维斯打开了一个她能找到的埋藏着最丰富记忆的宝藏:深爱之人的网上足迹。随着人们花费在键盘上的时间越来越多,尘封在阁楼之上、留给亲人好友睹思的物件就越来越少。信件变成了电子邮件,日记转变为博客,相册变成虚拟的。我们将自己的生活零碎片断放到网上,觉得它们似乎和互联网本身一样永恒,但是在我们死去之后,我们的虚拟身份会变成怎样?
It’s a thorny question, and for now, the answer depends on which sites you use. Privacy is a major issue. So are company policies to delete inactive accounts.
Facebook amended its policy a few months after Woolington died. “We first realized we needed a 10)protocol for deceased users after the 11)Virginia Tech shooting, when students were looking for ways to remember and honor their classmates,” says Facebook spokeswoman Elizabeth Linder. The company responded by creating a “memorial state” for profiles of deceased users, in which 12)features such as status updates and group affiliations are removed. Only the user’s confirmed friends can continue to view the profile and post comments on it.
If 13)next of kin ask to have a profile taken down, Facebook will comply. It will not, however, hand over a user’s password to let a family member access the account, which means private messages are kept just that.
这是一个棘手的问题。就目前状况来看,答案取决于你使用哪家网站的服务。涉及到的是个人隐私这一大议题,同时,“删除不活动帐户”这样的公司服务条款也是个大问题。
在沃灵顿离世几个月之后,“脸谱网”修改了他们的服务条款。“弗吉尼亚理工大学校园枪击案发生之后,学生们寻找各种方式回忆和纪念他们的同学,那时候,我们第一次意识到有必要针对离世的用户制定一套新的操作规程。” “脸谱网”公司的女发言人伊丽莎白·林德说。于是,该公司为已故用户的档案创建了一个“纪念状态”,取消了这些帐户的“状态更新”和“群组关系”等功能,而且只允许经过用户认证的好友才能继续浏览该用户档案和在该页面发表评论。
如果亲属要求撤下该用户的档案,“脸谱网”将会照做。但是他们不会向任一家属公开该用户的密码,让其登录帐户——这意味着,私人信息就此“安息”。
Rival [2]MySpace has a similar policy blocking account access but has fewer restrictions on profile-viewing. (This inspired an entrepreneur to create MyDeathSpace.com, which started out aggregating profiles of the deceased and has since morphed into a 14)ghoulish tabloid.)
E-mail is more complicated. Would you want, say, your parents to be able to access your account so they could contact all your 15)far-flung friends—whom you don’t have in your address book because you don’t have an address book—and tell them that you’ve passed on? Maybe. Would you want them to be able to read every message you’ve ever sent? Maybe not.
[3]Yahoo! Mail’s rule is to keep accounts private. “The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for an account is to treat their online activities as confidential, even after their death,” says spokesman Jason Khoury. Court orders sometimes 16)overrule that. In 2005, relatives of a 17)Marine killed in Iraq requested access to his e-mail account so they could make a scrapbook. When a judge sided with the family, Yahoo! copied the messages to a CD instead of turning over the account’s password. [4]Hotmail now allows family members to order a CD as long as they provide proof that they have power of attorney and a death certificate.[5]Gmail requires the same paperwork, plus a copy of an e-mail the deceased sent to the 18)petitioner.
“脸谱网”的竞争对手“聚友网”也有类似的服务条款。他们会封存离世用户的帐户,但不会对页面浏览设置更多的限制。(这激发了一家公司的灵感,促使他们创建了一个叫MyDeathSpace.com的网站,用于收集已故用户的信息,不过现在它已俨然演变成一份冷血的八卦小报了。)
电子邮件的问题则更为复杂。试想,你愿意让你的父母登录你的帐户吗?这样他们就可以找到你疏于联系的朋友——他们不在你的电话号码本上,因为你根本没有电话号码本——告诉他们你的死讯。也许吧。那么你是否愿意让你的父母看你曾经发出的每一封邮件呢?那就未必了。
雅虎邮箱的规则是保持帐户的私密性。“我们对在雅虎注册的每位用户作出承诺,他们在雅虎网上的活动将被保密,即便在他们去世后也是如此”,雅虎公司的发言人詹森·胡里说。然而,法院下达的命令有时候会推翻这条规定。2005年,一名死于伊拉克的海军陆战队军人的亲属要求登录死者的电子邮件账户,方便他们制作一本剪贴簿。法官支持家属的请求,于是雅虎将邮件复制到一张光盘上交给了他们,而不是直接给出密码。Hotmail现在允许家庭成员申请一张数据光盘,只要他们提供授权书和死亡证明。Gmail在这些文件之外,还要求提供一份死者寄给申请人的邮件副本。
If that sounds like a lot of trouble to 19)put your loved ones through, several companies are eager to help you plan ahead—for a fee, of course. Legacy Locker, Asset Lock and Deathswitch are among the firms offering 20)encrypted space for people to store their passwords and other information.
Legacy Locker, a San Francisco-based site is 21)looking to handle all the details of your online afterlife for $30 a year or a onetime fee of $300. To determine whether you have passed on, the firm will check with two “22)verifiers” (people you have designated to confirm your death) and examine a death certificate.
Deathswitch, which is based in 23)Houston, has a different system for releasing the funeral instructions, love notes and “unspeakable secrets” it suggests you store with your passwords and account 24)info. The company will regularly send you e-mail 25)prompts to verify that you’re still alive, at a frequency of your choosing. (Once a day? Once a year?) After a series of unanswered prompts, it will assume you’re dead and release your messages to 26)intended 27)recipients. One message is free; for more, the company charges members $19.95 a year.
“Digital legacy is at best misunderstood and at worst not thought about,” says Legacy Locker founder Jeremy Toeman, who came up with the idea for his company 28)mid-flight, when he was imagining what would happen to his many Web 29)domains if the plane crashed. “I would be surprised if five years from now, it’s not common for people to consider their digital assets alongside their wills.”
如果上面那些听起来让你觉得使你至爱之人成功获得你的“数字遗产”是件麻烦的事,一些公司很愿意助你未雨绸缪——当然,要收费的。“遗物守护者”、“财产锁定”和“死亡开关”等公司都提供加密空间,让人们保存他们的密码以及其他信息。
“遗物守护者”,一家位于旧金山的网络公司,许诺为其用户处理身后遗留在网上的信息数据,但要收取每年30美金或一次性支付的300美金服务费。为了确认你是不是已离世,公司会向两个“证明人”(你所指定的“死亡证明人”)核实并验证死亡证明。
位于休斯顿的网络公司“死亡开关”建议你随帐户密码及个人信息分类存储“葬礼安排嘱咐”、“爱的留言”、“不能说的秘密”,对这些信息的公开,该公司有不同的管理系统。公司将定期向你发送一封邮件(每天一封或每年一封,可以自由选择)以确定你是否还活着。当连续几封提醒邮件没有得到回应之后,系统会假定你已经亡故,并向你预先设定好的收件人发放你的信息。发一条信息是免费 的——但若想发出更多,他们将收取你19.95美元的年费。
“乐观地看,社会对‘数字遗产’这个问题是有所考虑的,只是存在着一些误解;但悲观地说,其实大家根本没想过这个问题。”“遗物守护者”的创立者杰瑞米·特曼说。他创建这家公司的念头源于一次乘坐飞机时的想象:如果飞机失事,他公司的众多网站域名将会怎样。“从现在开始算,我相信五年后大多数人在立遗嘱的时候都会考虑到他们的‘数字遗产’。”
[l] Facebook脸谱网，全球第一大社交网站，总部设在美国加州的帕拉阿图市
[2] MySpace聚友网，一个社交网络服务网站，其总部位于美国加州
[3] Yahoo!雅虎公司，一间全球互联网服务公司．提供门户网站、搜索引擎、Yahoo!邮箱、新闻等一系列互联网服务。它由斯坦福大学研究生杨致远和大卫·费罗于1994年1月创立，公司总部设在加州森尼韦尔市
[4] Hotmail即Windows Live Hotmail，前身为MSN Hotmail，一般简称Hotmail，是微软的一项免费互联网收发电子邮件服务，也是 第一个在Web接口上实现实时拼写检查的邮件系统
[5] Gmail著名搜索引擎Google公司于-2004年4月1日发布的一个免费的电子邮件服务。其最令人称道的就是它的使用界面，不但容易使用而且速度很快