VOA慢速英语:New Laws Needed to Deal With Users’ Digital Legacies

Benjamin Stassen took his own life in twenty-ten. His parents thought their twenty-one year old son was happy. Since his suicide, they have attempted to learn why he killed himself.
本杰明•达森于2010年自杀了，他的父母原以为21岁的儿子很快乐。他自杀后，父母设法弄清楚他自杀的原因。

Alice and Jay Stassen thought Benjamin’s Facebook account might hold clues to his suicide. But the account does not belong to them, nor did it belong to their son. Facebook owns everything in his account. That is what the company says in its user agreement.
爱丽丝和杰伊•达森认为本杰明的Facebook账户能提供他自杀的线索。但这个账户并不属于他们，也不属于儿子。FAcebook公司拥有他账户上的全部信息，该公司在用户协议上就是这么规定的。

Jay Stassen says he found it difficult even to communicate with Facebook.
杰伊•达森说，甚至跟Facebook沟通都是很难的。

JAY STASSEN: “If you search on the home page of Facebook for an email address, a mailing address, a phone number, a contact person to assist in a situation like we’ve been in, you will find a dearth of information.
杰伊•达森：“如果像我们这样因为需要而在主页上搜索电子邮件、邮件地址、电话号码、联系人，你会发现根本没有这些信息。”

A court ordered the company to let the Stassens see their son’s account. However, Facebook has yet to obey the order.
一家法院下令该公司让达森看儿子的账户，但Facebook没有依从命令。

Thirty-four-year-old Mac Tonnies died in his sleep in two thousand nine. He left behind a lot of online friends, many of whom liked his futuristic blog, “Post-Human Blues.” Work on the blog stopped when he died. A short time later, the comments area was filled with unwanted advertising. That angered his friend Dia Sobin.
34岁的马克•托尼斯2009年在睡梦中死去，他留下了许多在线网友，许多喜欢他那未来主义的博客“后现代蓝调”。他死后博客就停止了，很快，评论区满是不必要的广告，这令他的朋友Dia Sobin很生气。

DIA SOBIN: “It’s really like a desecration to find spam in that comment section in that blog, which basically has become almost like a virtual burial plot.” 
DIA SOBIN:“在博客的评论区出现广告真是亵渎，好像成了一个虚拟的墓地。”

Lawyer John Boucher stays informed about digital rights and the law. But he admits that he and his wife have signed many user agreements without reading them. He says he would not know how to get information from his wife’s accounts if she dies.     
律师John Boucher一直都了解数字版权和法律，但他承认，他和妻子不经阅读就签署了很多用户协议。他说如果妻子死了，他不知道怎么从她的账户获取信息。

JOHN BOUCHER: “I have no clue. So there is a dual problem here. One is people don’t think about it. And two, even if they did, they might find they are legally barred from doing it. I personally think what’s gonna happen over time is there are going to be model laws drafted to deal with all these circumstances. But they’re gonna take years to be accepted by the states, you know. There’s going to be a gray area for the foreseeable future.”

John Boucher：“没有线索，所以这是个双重问题。一是人们不会想这个问题，二是，即使想到了，也会发现自己已被法律禁止这么做了。我个人认为，将来会草拟一些示范法来处理这种问题。但各州要很多年才能接受这个，所以在可以预见的未来，这将是片灰色地带。”

Some businesses now are offering people a way to control what happens to their online information after they die. One way to do this is to place your online accounts and passwords in a digital storage area. You give the owners of the area orders about which information to destroy and which to give others when you die.
一些公司现在提供死后如何处理在线信息的业务，一个办法就是将网络账户和密码存到数字存储区里，告诉这个存储区的所有者，自己死后哪些信息可以销毁，哪些信息可以给别人。

Mark Plattner was one of Mac Tonnie’s friends. He recently used a program called Sitesucker to download Mac’s blog. He then uploaded a copy of the blog to a new web site under his control. Mark Plattner says we should all plan our own digital legacy. He says “don’t be passive -- get to work on your online afterlife now.”
一些公司现在提供死后如何处理在线信息的业务，一个办法就是将网络账户和密码存到数字存储区里，告诉这个存储区的所有者，自己死后哪些信息可以销毁，哪些信息可以给别人。