Facebook after death legislation proposed in New Hampshire
This atheist Facebook page could land an Indonesian man in prison for up to five years.
What happens to the Facebook page of a person who has died? No one really knows.
New Hampshire Rep. Peter Sullivan has introduced legislation that would give social networking page rights to the dead person's estate, ABC News reported. Five other states have introduced similar legislation.
Sullivan said he was inspired by a case in Canada, in which a teenage girl committed suicide. After her death, people continued to write taunts on her Facebook page.
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"The family wasn't able to do anything," Sullivan told WMUR. "They couldn't go in and delete those comments, and they couldn't take the page down completely."
Facebook does have a procedure that allows friends of a dead person to "memorialize" the Facebook page, Digital Journal reported. However, Facebook does not issue login and password information to family members, so they have no control over comments. In addition, the "memorialize request" form is so easily available that practically anyone can access it and convince Facebook that a user has died, according to Digital Journal.
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