What happens to your e-mail when you die?

Several weeks ago, there were various media stories about the family of a soldier killed in Iraq who wanted access to the e-mail messages in the soldier's Yahoo account.  Yahoo declined pointing to a provision in its contract that states that when a user dies, the account is closed and all e-mail messages are permanently deleted.

For further analysis of this intriguing issue, I recommend for your reading enjoyment two of the posts contained on the wonderful blog of Prof. James Edward Maule of Villanova.

• Initial Discussion
• Follow-Up Discussion