¶ … Privacy Justin Ellsworth's parents should not have been given access to his e-mail account on their request alone, as it would have violated nearly every privacy act in existence at the time of the case, the Yahoo agreement terms with Justin, and set a dangerous precedence for invasion of digital assets of the deceased. Yahoo relented and only provided the e-mail account access on court order, which preserved the digital rights and privacy of its millions of customers using Yahoo mail and other online e-mail applications in the process (Leach 2005). Yahoo argued successfully that providing access without court order would have violated the Stored Communications Act (SCA), 18. U.S.C. § 2701. This has become an often-cited precedent by all other Internet e-mail providers who must retain the trust of their customers to stay in business. The case has a multifaceted ethical aspect to it, which is analyzed from a deontological and utilitarian standpoint below.

Analysis of E-mail Access from an Ethical Standpoint

Deontological reasoning is predicated on the findings of Kant (1981) who posited that moral laws take the form of categorical reasoning and imperatives including university, congeniality and community. Universality concentrates on the universal laws of nature, congeniality focused on treating persons as ends, never as mere means, and community where Kant believes the best ethical outcomes come from a decision maker putting themselves in the role of subject and sovereignty (Ralph, 1999). Using deontological ethics to evaluate the decision of whether to allow the Ellsworths to gain access to their deceased son's Yahoo e-mail account raises the ethical dilemma of defining a parents' right to know of their son's thoughts and emotions immediately before his untimely death. The ethical dilemma for Yahoo is however seen from a global standpoint, where the deontological conflict of needing to preserve the rights of e-mail customers to their privacy, even in death...

Yet from a deontological perspective it could be argued either way, with the family having higher precedence to access over the broader interpretation of the law.
What makes access to e-mail a paradox from an deontological perspective is that universality and congeniality, two of the three formulations Kant defined in his categorical imperative, are plausibly met by serving the family first (Ralph, 1999). What makes the paradox so difficult is that community, the third categorical imperative, is clearly violated if Yahoo chooses to make an exception to its licensing agreement and provide the family access to the deceased soldier's e-mail account.

Deontological ethics must be interpreted across all three categorical imperatives if they are to provide the necessary foundation for ethical decision making (Irene, 2007). Yahoo stayed consistent with all three categorical imperatives and was able to alleviate any legal challenges as a result. The universality aspect of the case from a deontological perspective also shows that regardless of how many families, from varied circumstances regarding the loss of a loved one and family member, does not ever provide an exception to the violating of the three categorical imperatives either. In this context, Kant's definition of deontological reasoning resembles the core concepts of utilitarianism as well (Irene, 2007).

Deontological reasoning and utilitarianism share a commonality at the structural level as both look to provide consistency of ethical and moral direction based on the foundational use of core categorical…