Digital Legacy and Data Ownership: Posthumous IP

In my time at Google, I oversaw the digitization of a number of personal archives. The services we offered were “complete,” meaning that everything was digitized at once: each letter, photograph, receipt, document and contract. Many of the stewards of these personal archives who discussed this service with us were hesitant or outright refused to allow for such a broad digitization and publication of these assets often fearing that some assets lacking context could be misinterpreted or misconstrued due to changes over time in the acceptability of certain behaviors. There were also those whose names or families were still synonymous with thriving businesses who may be at risk should certain documentation or images be released. This type of estate management and protection of legacy will need to be quickly adapted to a life led alongside a digital physical presence such as a domestic embodied intelligence, as it will be observing daily life and behaviors of those who live alongside it.  

The protection of this sensitive data could be that it would be encrypted or even wiped after death like the burning of President Harding’s Personal Documents at the request of his widow in 1924. Alternatively, these could be selectively arranged and curated to both emotionally benefit the remaining family and protect the legacy of the individual.  Although this is a delicate and controversial practice, it already happens with physical archives and will have to be adapted for the age of domestic robotics. The appointment of a digital estate manager or data steward could become common practice as the world of digital legacies broadens in the age of information. As we have more and more data recorded in our lives and it is increasingly under our own control, we will need to form standards of how to use it to establish and curate our own legacies after death. 

The Funeral of President Harding

This enormous store of data in the form of metadata, chat logs, images, video, biometrics and beyond will need to be classified.  One could see the daily recordings in the same way in which we today see the diary of a historical figure or alternatively, we could view these recordings as intensely private and sensitive personal data. Data privacy and protection laws typically protect living individuals and as of now, many do not extend to posthumous protection.  Aside from medical records which are protected under HIPPA and similar regional laws where the stewardship transfers to the next of kin or certain confidential communications, bank accounts or legal documents which shift to the executor of your estate, the protection of personal data after death is often platform specific and can have a wide variance of protection.  Each platform can determine their policy based on their intended use and the data storage methods. This introduces a brand new debate over how someone’s day to day observation data will be handled. As we go about our days in our private spaces, how do we maintain the sanctity of the private sphere if we have an observer present who may potentially store our data until long after we pass? 

 If we see the recordings as a type of diary or intellectual property thanks to their intrinsic link to how we live our lives, however, we run into an entirely new set of legal regulations which transition the debate from privacy laws, which expire after death, to copyright laws. Perhaps an artist was writing music or singing in their living room and the recording was captured by the domestic intelligence or perhaps a person of public interest made a habit of giving their robot a daily log at the end of the day, who then can profit from the potential publication of that IP? We typically follow the Berne Convention Standard of 1886 whereby there is a copyright term of the author’s life plus 70 years. After that period, any work typically enters the public domain, meaning anyone may use it without seeking permission or paying royalties. If the work is “unpublished” or “found” among the artist or author’s estate, some legal systems gave these works special or longer protection, but modern laws in many jurisdictions including the US in 1978, have harmonized or “merged” the rules so that unpublished works by authors who died on or after a certain date now follow the same life + 70 years term. In many countries in the EU, if an unpublished manuscript is found and published for the first time after the 70-year term, sometimes a “publisher’s right” may apply, which grants a limited term of protection for the publication, not for the original work itself. This is a narrower right that typically lasts a shorter time (often 25 years) and doesn’t resurrect copyright ownership of the underlying work (the work remains in the public domain). This could have an impact on a biographical film made with audio visual data from a humanoid robot living in the home of a future historical figure. 

A selection of works that entered the public domain in 2025

Although living life alongside a domestic robot presents a unique challenge for our digital legacies, we can look to top tech companies who have already come up against this issue and have proposed regulations for their own data management after the death of a user. 

Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, offers “memorialization” of accounts or allows verified relatives to request removal or limited data access. These memorialized accounts remain visible, but no one can log in or change past posts. Google, which manages gmail, google drive, google photos and google docs, has an “Inactive Account Manager” feature where you can pre-specify how each individual google service should be handled if your account becomes inactive for a certain period.  If the user has no plan in place, next of kin can attempt to request data via a special procedure, but success is not guaranteed.  Apple, which controls iCloud, has “Digital Legacy” tools to appoint a trusted contact who can access certain data after your death.  Without a plan, data retrieval can be complex.  The determination of what may happen to your data, across the majority of major data service providers, seems to be primarily in the hands of the user, yet is not often discussed prior to an emergency where it may be too late.

Anyone considering sharing their home and life with a domestic robot should have advanced directives and estate planning before they welcome their embodied intelligence into their home. Those in public office, leading a life with public interest or identifying as an artist, author or creative, should be in full understanding of the divide between what can and will be likely accessed after their death vs what will stay private. This has implications on how we see our innate right to privacy in our homes and how we will protect our legacies after death. The best way to manage these issues is to inform yourself, discuss the potential issues and create your own personal posthumous data policy before any unforeseen instances occur and to create the directive you’d like to see for your own data.