Digital remains should be treated like physical ones

Our internet activity - commonly referred to as digital remains, should be treated with the same care and respect as physical remains, according to Oxford University research. Our internet activity lives on long after we die and firms such as Facebook and experimental start-ups, have sought to monetise this content by allowing people to socialise with the dead online, via live-stream funerals, online memorial pages and even chat-bots that use people's social media footprints' to act as online ghosts. As a result the digital afterlife industry (DAI) has become big business. However, in recent years the boundaries around acceptable afterlife activity and grief exploitation have become increasingly blurry. To date, there has been little effort to build frameworks that ensure ethical usage of our internet activity for commercial purposes. However, new research from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) suggests that the guidelines used to manage human remains in archaeological exhibitions could be used as a framework to regulate the growing DAI industry, and make the commercial use of digital remains more ethical. The study Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information and Director of the Digital Ethics Lab, and Carl Öhman, a postdoctoral researcher at OII, advises that online remains should be viewed as an extension of the human body, and treated with the same level of care and respect - rather than manipulated for commercial gain. The paper suggests that regulation is the best way to achieve this and highlights the frameworks used to regulate commercial use of organic human remains as a good model to build on.