Lisa Hancock stated:
e-mail should be treated no differently than any other personal
> belongings and they revert to the next of kin or recipients specified > in a will.
> This really should be a no-brainer, and the parents should not have
> had to go court to get what was rightfully theirs. "
The underlying question behind this is who owns the email. Both private companies and governments have been at issues with their employees over this since email became the prevalent means of communication. Courts have ruled that if you are using equipment provided by your employer, then the messages that are composed, reside and travel through those systems is the property of the company or government. Witness the FOIA or Freedom of Information Act requests governments respond to daily.
The issue that needs to be resolved is if the ownership of the data, residing on the company's (in this particular case - Yahoo!) belongs to the sender or is it the property of the equipment provider?
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ignoring for a minute those situations where the computer belongs to the company and the worker _should be_ attending to the business of his employer. In those cases I do agree the computer's output should belong to the employer. I am thinking now instead of those cases where one has an account with an ISP such as Yahoo for example: If I am _renting_ the use of the computer then the computers output should belong to me. Another example might be I live on a farm and rent or lease a machine to plant my crops. Now my crops grow and are harvested. Do the crops belong to you since I rented the machinery from you to do my work? If I am employed on the farm and work with your tools, then I suppose the crops are yours also. But not if the machinery, etc is under my exclusive control for some period of time. PAT]