Succession of image and digital memory rights: between reality and metafiction in “Be right back”

Abstract

This paper analyzes one episode of the series Black Mirror, titled “Be Right Back”. The purpose is to consider the possibility of storing information of deceased people from social networks for further use, and the implications it could bring to succession law. Much has been discussed on digital inheritance and the destination of stored assets from virtual profiles and e-mail accounts after death. However, the possibility of using the data collected after the person’s death is questionable, especially with the fictional possibility of using them for the development of “interactive avatars”. Technology from the analyzed episode can be seen in real life in initial stages, with social network accounts that make people “immortal”. The methodology used here is inductive and exploratory, and establishes a dialogue with the metafiction of Black Mirror in order to exemplify and theorize a not-so-distant possibility. This paper is based on the “Law and Fiction” research area in order to formulate its propositions. At the end, it presents three lines of analysis: the manifestation of will, the right to being forgotten, and the rights of personality, in order to conclude the impossibility of the research object to be fully real in current legal order, which now seems unfit to deal with digital inheritance matters.