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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Many online soft purchases made with a unique mailbox I own but the rhs@lhs.org domain I own also. So.. when I'm gone the ownership of the email identified will vest with who gets my domain.

The IPR lawyers hate this and want to say "no no no you can't vest rights in those MP3s with your son" but they're going to struggle to show a loss of continuity in the licenced holder.

Personal domain be powerful tool.

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I'm curious, how do you make sure the domain ends in the right hands? Can you put it on your will and will the registrar respect that?

It was a thin forest of hits in google btw. So, not a field which is well ploughed. So my assumption the domain is heritable is probably moot. But, what I really meant is that its an artifice which makes it significantly less likely an IPR licence through an email account falls fallow: The domain possession means my heirs can ensure the rhs@lhs.com always responds, so they can do password recovery and ID checks through email to satisfy they "own" the account. Obviously if it falls back to real-world ID checks, they're hosed.

I didn't mean to imply what I do is intruding a legal mechanism to acquire IPR by transfer. The law says I bought exclusive use, for me and regards the MP3 licence to use as a thing which dies with me. The email chain is going to say "yep.. this mailbox responds when you ask for money" and so the issuing MP3 licence issuer is going to say "I see no interruption in service to the identity I apparently sold the IPR to" so whilst in law, I'm still breaking the law, in practice, I don't think people are going to know. Then, when the new owner subscribes to an 'all you can eat' MP3 service which scrapes the id3 info and says "your tunes are in me" the music will be re-identified, and I suspect their permanency will be enshrined through that agency, even if they terminate the rental agreement: most of the ones I used let you use a one-time bulk downloader to get back the tunes you uplifted by signature.

Its not me@lhs.com. its a generic like sharedmusic@lhs.com or music@lhs.com or family@lhs.com btw.

(and I wish it was lhs.com)

I think the transfer of the domain as a heritable use is arguably stronger than licenced IPR. but you're right to question the assumption. Worst case my heirs can use my keystore to open the registry account, unlock the domain and transfer it to themselves for fee if need be.

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