Wanted: Account to continue when owner expires

chmoss

I would like to see an account feature that would somehow keep my pictures online after I expire - not planned for the near future - but who knows?
It could take several features - a prepaid "forever" service, notification of a pre-approved third party who could take over the site when a renewal goes unprocessed, whatever. The details probably need a dozen lawyers to figure out.
What I am asking for is the possibility of the pics staying up "forever" - or at least the life of smugmug and its successors. This would enable future generations to access pictures of the life and times of their ancestors, like they can now when they find physical family albums.
Possibly, some form of agreement with the internet archive
http://www.archive.org/index.php
to dump the site on the Wayback Machine" could be involved.

mike.strock

chmoss wrote:

I would like to see an account feature that would somehow keep my pictures online after I expire - not planned for the near future - but who knows?
It could take several features - a prepaid "forever" service, notification of a pre-approved third party who could take over the site when a renewal goes unprocessed, whatever. The details probably need a dozen lawyers to figure out.
What I am asking for is the possibility of the pics staying up "forever" - or at least the life of smugmug and its successors. This would enable future generations to access pictures of the life and times of their ancestors, like they can now when they find physical family albums.
Possibly, some form of agreement with the internet archive
http://www.archive.org/index.php
to dump the site on the Wayback Machine" could be involved.

Wouldn't this be better handled by your estate planner?

"Once you are dead, all smugmug.com accounts will be renewed until such time as your monies left over run out. Then, you are dead dead."

Or something to that effect. All details on renewing the smugmug.com accounts should be kept in a secure place, along with credit card info, funeral info, wills, etc.

Wouldn't that work?

Mike Strock

PBolchover

I once emailed smugmug about this. They replied saying

We would certainly work with your estate, no problems there.

chmoss

mike.strock wrote:

Wouldn't this be better handled by your estate planner?

"Once you are dead, all smugmug.com accounts will be renewed until such time as your monies left over run out. Then, you are dead dead."

Or something to that effect. All details on renewing the smugmug.com accounts should be kept in a secure place, along with credit card info, funeral info, wills, etc.

Wouldn't that work?

Not really. Accounts could be hijacked by a person claiming to be an estate administrator. I am sure my estate admin is not computer literate enough to handle this type of thing. A clean, one time payment to Smugmug combined with an instruction to my estate to trigger the archiving on the event of my death would make me much more comfortable. Or perhaps Smugmug could buy a group life policy to cover them and extend participation to members by subscription.

Leathersmithe

chmoss wrote:

Not really. Accounts could be hijacked by a person claiming to be an estate administrator. I am sure my estate admin is not computer literate enough to handle this type of thing. A clean, one time payment to Smugmug combined with an instruction to my estate to trigger the archiving on the event of my death would make me much more comfortable. Or perhaps Smugmug could buy a group life policy to cover them and extend participation to members by subscription.

I, too, asked SmugMug about a continuing archive: "Hey, what happens when I croak? Who maintains my archived thousands of photos on SmugMug? Or what happens if I get Old-Timer's Disease, and forget to re-up? Or change my bank account and your annual pound-of-flesh isn't auto-pid to you? Will you dump my photos out in the dog waste? Will I or my heirs be informed? I'm worried!"

The reply assured me that SmugMug would contact me or anyone with access to my e-mail account, but who among us has given anyone else that kind of access?

"If you tell your heirs about your SmugMug account, they would be able to work something out with us, in case something happens. If your account renewal would lapse, we would send you renewal error emails. So if you give them access to your email account, they'll see our messages as well. Your account wouldn't be removed right away. We'll keep on trying to contact you and only if after months, we don't hear anything, our system will close the account. Just make sure that you keep the email address on your account up to date. That'll give you lots of ahead time in case you forgot to update the card on your account or if your bank rejects our renewal."

My vote is for some insurance policy or a pre-payment contract that would assure a continuing archive. I don't expect SmugMug to provide the service for free, and some users may not require it, but I wonder how many have even considered their own mortality and the consequent loss of their photo collections. Will your survivors know how to access and maintain or download those precious collections? Could SmugMug accept multiple backup e-mail addresses of contacts to be used in the event of a silent non-renewal, an indication of one's final departure?

Andy

Leathersmithe wrote:

I, too, asked SmugMug about a continuing archive: "Hey, what happens when I croak? Who maintains my archived thousands of photos on SmugMug? Or what happens if I get Old-Timer's Disease, and forget to re-up? Or change my bank account and your annual pound-of-flesh isn't auto-pid to you? Will you dump my photos out in the dog waste? Will I or my heirs be informed? I'm worried!"

The reply assured me that SmugMug would contact me or anyone with access to my e-mail account, but who among us has given anyone else that kind of access?

"If you tell your heirs about your SmugMug account, they would be able to work something out with us, in case something happens. If your account renewal would lapse, we would send you renewal error emails. So if you give them access to your email account, they'll see our messages as well. Your account wouldn't be removed right away. We'll keep on trying to contact you and only if after months, we don't hear anything, our system will close the account. Just make sure that you keep the email address on your account up to date. That'll give you lots of ahead time in case you forgot to update the card on your account or if your bank rejects our renewal."

My vote is for some insurance policy or a pre-payment contract that would assure a continuing archive. I don't expect SmugMug to provide the service for free, and some users may not require it, but I wonder how many have even considered their own mortality and the consequent loss of their photo collections. Will your survivors know how to access and maintain or download those precious collections? Could SmugMug accept multiple backup e-mail addresses of contacts to be used in the event of a silent non-renewal, an indication of one's final departure?

Neat ideas, maybe there's something in there we can do!

Cygnus Studios

Andy wrote:

Neat ideas, maybe there's something in there we can do!

The support and customer service you guys provide sets a darn high standard, that I wish others would emulate.

Kudos

dmc

that is wierd this came up... I had recently thought about this myself. I have so many hours invested in this site and my family loves all the pictures online but I would hate to see it get lost in the shuffle if I dropped :sick. I like the insurance idea to either keep the account active "forever", and maybe archive the entire acct to some beneficiary.

How about Smugmug allows us to designate a beneficiary? We just provide a name, address and email acct. If the acct goes unpaid for some reason, Smugmug could contact the beneficiary as a last resort... and if they provide proof of :hack then the acct is turned over to them....

Ryan Armbrust

This is kinda crazy. I was just thinking about this the other day. As someone who just recently beat stage IV Hodgkin's Lymphoma, stuff like this is always on the back of my mind.