Loren Gladstone of Toronto is 58, but thinking over how to bequeath   his digital property . Doing the paperwork after his parents' death was a challenge. "When my time comes, I wonder if my children will even know what paper is," he says. As a software developer, his virtual property is both valuable and vital to his business. That reflects a problem. Online lives have increasing economic and emotional value. But testamentary   laws offer confusing and incomplete ways of bequeathing and inheriting   them. Digital property may include software, websites, downloaded content, online gaming identities, social-media accounts and even e-mails. In Britain alone holdings of digital music may be worth over PS9 billion ($14 billion). A fifth of respondents to a Chinese local-newspaper survey said they had over 5,000 yuan($790) of digital property. And value does not lie only in money."Anyone with kids under 14 years old probably has two prints of them and the rest are in online galleries,"says Nathan Lustig of Entrustet, a company that helps people manage digital property. Service providers have different rules--and few state them clearly in their terms and conditions. Many give users a personal right to use an account, but nobody else, even after death. Facebook allows relatives to close an account or turn it into a memorial page. Gmail (run by Google) will provide copies of e-mails to an executor  . Music downloaded via iTunes is held under a license which can be abolished on death. Apple declined to comment on the record on this or other policies. All e-mail and data on its iCloud service are deleted on the death of the owner. This has led to cases to court in America. In 2004 the family of Justin Ellsworth, an army man killed in Iraq, took Yahoo! to court in Michigan to get copies of his e-mails. This year, a court in Oregon ruled that another American mother whose son had died could use her dead son's password to enter his Facebook account for a short period. Now five American states have made laws giving executors control over the social-networking accounts of dead users. But this raises the subject of privacy. Passing music on is one thing; not everyone may want their relatives to read their e-mails. Colin Pearson, a London-based lawyer, says access should come only with a clear provision in a will. But laws, wills and password safes may be contrary to the providers' terms of service, especially when the executor is in one country and the data in another. Headaches for the living and lots of lovely work for lawyers. Why does Loren begin to think over how to bequeath his digital property at the age of 58?
Because he is afraid his children don't know what paper is. Because there's no complete law dealing with digital property. Because his digital property is of great value and importance. Because he is worried his children will be taken to court.