Legal treatment of digital data of the deceased

Abstract

With the increase in the number of SNS users, the increase and diversification of Internet services used by individuals and the spread of cloud services, the handling of digital data of the deceased has recently become a focus of attention. In Japan, there is no unified legal system regarding the digital data of the deceased. The EU's GDPR and Japan's Personal Information Protection Law, in principle, limit the scope of protection to the deceased. In contrast, in the US, many states recognize the right of publicity of the deceased. This paper compares the legal systems of various countries regarding the handling of digital data of the deceased, and examines how users should deal with them.