Who owns your memories?

Question

With technology becoming more and more capable or recording memories, who will own them? Certainly companies will require a partial lobotomy upon leaving a company. Will your heirs have a right to your memories? Will the courts have the ability to access them? What protections will there be to keep your memories private?

Mysticduder,

There is an article in "Scientific American" in the March 2007 issue. The title is "A Digital Life."

Science is moving s quickly you will miss something if you blink.

Answer 1

The best way to address that question is to ask the question “Who has rights to ones personal effects and property, after one passes away currently?” The laws that govern inheritance and ownership about physical things currently will probably be applied simliarly to any innovation that will allow our memories to be digitized. There is no reason to make a distinction, or treat as a special case, personal memories. Memories are owned by the person who utilizes them in the same way a car belongs to a car owner. Hence if a owner can bequeath, formally through a will, his car to his son or wife, then why not memories as well?

Answer 2

It's a good question BUT the precedence has already been set I think. If you say, have a thought or an idea while working at a company, most companies have you sign something saying they have the rights to it. So having a thought, means the company has rights to the memory.

Answer 3

technology is becoming more and more capable of recording memories? I missed that article in popular science.

Answer 4

I own my memories outright. I don't share them with technology, so they are mine.

Answer 5

It's all yours till you give it away . .

Don't be too generous