Website and copyright issues after death

[davidkhardman]

I have just learned of the death of a former colleague, who took voluntary redundancy a couple of years ago. This colleague has a website, with his own name as the domain name, and the website consists of many photographs documenting his travels.

At work, we would like to try and create a photomontage from the jpegs, in order to hang on the wall in his memory. Under normal circumstances, we would contact a relative to ask permission to download and use the jpegs in this way, even though we are not trying to gain commercially (his website does assert his copyright). However, our colleague was not married, and he has no living relatives that we know of in Britain (we think there are relatives abroad but wouldn't know how to contact them). Do readers of this forum think that it is OK for us to go ahead and use his pictures in this way?

A related issue concerns his website itself. We do not know whether or not our colleague would have wished his website to continue after his death. Do we have any responsibility to contact the web host about this? I don't know whether the domain is paid for on an annual basis or whether it will continue indefinitely. However, our colleague did advertise the sale of hi-res versions of his pictures (which he dealt with personally rather than via a third party), so it is possible that people might try to purchase from his site.

Any advice would be appreciated.

David

[MattUK]

Sorry to hear of your loss.

With regards to the former question - I can't see any issue at all, as you mention you're just hanging the pictures on the wall (presumably not public), and not looking to profit from them.

With regards to the latter, emailing the host seems a decent thing to do, though you may have trouble authenticating him passing away to them, so they may be suspicious of your email as a hoax

[nick_gray]

Sorry to hear of your loss.

Before you take the images, I think you should try to contact the person that is dealing with your colleague's probate*. The copyright of your colleague's images will remain with his estate, even after his death. It will be down to his executor to decide weather to allow you to use their images, even if you are intending them to be used as a tribute/memorial.

As far as your colleague's website is concerned, again this should be handled by the person handling the probate. You can certainly help them if you are tech savvy by using the whois on Nominet or ICANN to point them towards the contact details of the domain name/web site hosting company.

* To find this, contact the local coroner or register office of where your friend used to live. They should be able to put you in contact with the solicitor that is handling the estate, or even relatives of the deceased.

Regards

Nick

[Dagwood]

I would not disagree with anything said above apart from the fact that it would be a heartless executor who disagreed with the use of material for a non commercial tribute/memorial. It is worth mentioning though that the legal eagles are aware that copyright stays with the estate for a period of 70 years (recently amended thro European legislation) following the death of the artist. So they will be keen to tie up any commercial possibilities that may be open to a web site operator.
Dagwood