Who Owns Digital IT Collectibles: 'The Law Hasn't Caught Up Yet'

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Who Owns Digital IT Collectibles: 'The Law Hasn't Caught Up Yet'

2/1/2007

By Terry Calhoun

Living as I do, in a farmhouse built in 1870 with lots of out-buildings, has only accentuated my tendency to collect things. Courtesy of the fellow who built Ann Arbor's Eberwhite subdivision early in the 1900s, and who lived in my house, I have a nice collection of old tools, hinge plates, door knobs, and the like. He was something of a collector himself, so I also have hundreds of pre-1900 medicine bottles which he apparently got when he bought out an old pharmacy and pill-repackaging company that used to retail out of the building in which Ann Arbor's classic, old-style ice cream outlet, the Washtenaw Dairy is now housed.

I have some modern stuff, too: One of the Macintosh TV/computers, black, oversized, and it really never worked all that well. But I have it, and its operating manuals and software discs. Likewise, I have stored away a mid-1980s KayPro "portable," which weighs about 60 pounds. Yep, it has a handle, looks like a big, heavy suitcase, and you can lug it around. I also have, somewhere on some disk or another, every e-mail message that I have ever sent or received—beginning in 1993. Oh, and I have a collection of about 200 slide rules.

You can decide for yourself whether you agree with my wife, or not, who is pretty sure that none of my collections will ever have much retail value, or a retail purchaser at any value. But, as I assure her, at least the physical objects and the files I have on one kind of disc or another truly belong to me, and will belong to her after I die. That's not so clear of about the thousands of files and pieces of information I have squirreled away all over the Internet.

It was around 1992 when the first World Wide Web browser was created and widely shared via the Internet. Ever since, confusion has reigned in the minds of the many people who think that the Web and the Internet are one and the same, not that it really matters for them. However, even before 1992, thoughtful groups of professionals were using the Internet for communication and information sharing.

My employer, the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), was an early adopter of the Internet. In October of 1987, the first issue of what was then called "SCUP Bitnet News" (monthly), was transmitted to an early-connected group of our members. To our knowledge, what is now called "SCUP e-mail News" (weekly) and has ~16,000 subscribers, is the second-oldest continuously-published e-mail newsletter on (in? of?) the entire Internet.

You would expect a bunch of planners to be looking ahead, but I am nonetheless very proud of those SCUPers. We'll celebrate that 20 th anniversary later this year. This raises a question of ownership: Suppose that you had subscribed to our e-mail newsletter from the very first issue, and that you had all of the back issues stored on a Web 2.0 server somewhere out in cyberspace. Then you die. Who "owns" your e-mails?