A regular definition of a digital asset can be “Anything that is stored digitally, in the cloud or on local media, that might have financial, personal or emotional value”.
Your digital and online assets can be classified in two categories. On the one hand, accounts, which are keys that lead to the digital vaults like iTunes, twitter, facebook, … . On the other hand, you do have digital goods like emails, photos, tweets, music, ebooks, movies, and so on. Apart from these, you can also have digital currency, in the form of money sitting on paypal, bitcoins, online games accounts.
People start recognizing the value of their digital assets. Take Facebook. It appears that around 10% of Britons leave their facebook password in their will# — and amongst the reasons are the fact that our photo albums do not sit at home.. but in the cloud.
Lastly, it’s not because it’s a in game that a digital asset will have no value. They are auction websites specialized in trading items or local currencies for online games. A sword in a game (was Age of Wulin) can be sold 16k$ — and World of Warcraft fans can sell their characters from 500 to 800$ for characters on which some time was spent, to 5000$ for some well equipped warriors.
You can consider as well your eBook library, songs and electronic movie catalog (all of them being legal and paid for, I’m sure), as well as, let’s say, your apps, for which you’ll be spending around 10$ a month# in average. Whatever the support digital assets rely on, they still represent prized possessions, with a clear financial value, but also a nice sentimental and personal value.
A washington estate attorney took the example of one client having a complete activity and business online. A photograph today can have pictures that are published or licensed, thousands of pictures stored digitally, instructional videos and tutorials, etc.
Now imagine her heirs going into her house after her departure: there may be no trace of her business, save for the camera and set-ups. But the products would not be there, maybe no negatives, or prints, even less film rolls. Contracts, licenses, all accounts could be stored as well in the cloud. Without a proper planning, her whole life work could be done: no more publishing or licensing.
