[ad_1]
Karlsruhe (Germany) – Germany's highest court issued a long-awaited ruling on "digital inheritance" on Thursday, giving reason to parents who demanded that Facebook access the account of their deceased daughter.
Addressing the social network in vain, the mother had wanted to retrieve the contents and conversations of their daughter before she died crushed by a subway in Berlin, at the age of 15, in 2012. [19659003Theparentshopedtounderstandthecircumstancesofhisbrutaldeath-accidentorsuicide-forexamplebylookingforwritingssuggestinghisintentiontoendhislife
Facebook argued that access to the teenager's data could violate the private content of other users who communicated with her.
The parents invoked the fact that the content on their daughter's Facebook account is legally identical to diaries or letters that can be returned to loved ones after a death, like an inheritance.
The highest German court, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, thus proved them right. " The contract of user of a person to a social network pbades in the universal succession of the heirs of the holder of this account ", decided the highest German jurisdiction.
The judges of Karlsruhe consider that the data that Facebook intends to protect belong in fact to a " user account " and not to a " specific person " and that it is necessary to 'wait' at some point in his life for third persons to access this account ", with or without the consent of the original owner.
– Private correspondence? –
This legal and ethical dilemma has been rebounding in German courts for three years. In 2015, in the first instance, the court ruled in favor of the parents, the Berlin court saying that the contract between the user and Facebook was in the field of succession, including the digital content published on the account.
The deceased being a minor, her parents had the right to know when and with whom she communicated on Facebook, had moreover estimated the judges.
But two years later, the Berlin Court of Appeal took the opposite position and joined the US giant's argument on privacy, recalling that " the secrecy of telecommunications is guaranteed by the Basic Law "German and also applies to the content of Facebook accounts.
The persons with whom the girl was in contact can also claim the protection of this digital correspondence, private nature, had added the judges Berlin.
" The problems of data confidentiality are not affected because the regulation only protects the living people ", decided on this point on Thursday the judges of the Federal Court.
– Page " In Memory of " –
When a Facebook user dies, only two options are offered to his relatives: turn the account into a page " In memory of ", which allows you to share posts in memory of the missing person, but not to access his mail, or directly ask the platform to delete the account of the deceased, via a form.
The question of digital inheritance, an ethical and legal imbroglio, is regularly emerging in different countries.
In 2016, Apple engaged in a showdown with the FBI, which wanted to force him to unlock the Iphone from one of the two perpetrators of the San Bernardino bombing, committed in California. last year.
On the other hand, Apple was more cooperative with an Italian father, who was demanding in 2016 the release of his child's iPhone, which died of cancer to recover memories and photos.
Source link
