As we noted over a year ago in “Issues: Transfer of Personal Online Accounts to Third Parties“, what happens to your account after your death depends on the stated policies of that website. This morning on Skype Journal, Phil Wolff wrote the following:

MySpace says your account dies with you. They mean your login information and all the data you created and used. This includes your buddy list, avatars, history logs, text chat archives, etc.

This is very important when applied to accounts that are for groups, bands, etc.:

That’s immensely useful information, rich in hard won social capital. People use IM to organize their churches, school projects, political clubs, work teams; their real world and online lives.

It becomes necessary to find a website that will allow for transfer of login rights and information to other individuals. In this case, it is much easier to register your own domain, setup the hosting of the site, and then document all of this information so that someone else in the organization can continue the foundation you created without having to build from scratch.

Read Phil’s full comments contained in the article, “Your MySpaceIM account dies when you do“.