Although the battle between Yahoo! and the family of a Marine killed in Iraq ended last week, questions over the postmortem ownership of personal e-mails still looms.

Lance Cpl. Justin M. Ellsworth was killed November 13 in Iraq, and since Ellsworth’s death, his parents have fought to gain access to their son’s Yahoo! mail account. Yahoo!’s policy, however, states an account is automatically terminated upon death.

While other e-mail providers, including America Online Inc., EarthLink Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which runs Hotmail, have provisions for transferring accounts upon proof of death and identity as next of kin, Yahoo!’s privacy policy rightly prohibits such action.

To classify e-mail in the same way as other intellectual property is incorrect, and e-mail files should not be treated the same as medical and financial records after death. For instance, unlike the other forms, two parties are involved in electronic correspondence.

Although Ellsworth is dead and the divulgence of the e-mails may no longer have an effect on him, others who had corresponded with him should not have their thoughts and ideas exposed to his family.

Furthermore, this case is of particular interest because Ellsworth was a Marine in Iraq. Now that his e-mails are released to his family, who’s to say the family can’t hear his phone conversations, which are routinely recorded by the military?

The increasing popularity of e-mail over the past decade has brought about many uncertainties as to regulation of the medium. One solution, however, that balances privacy rights and ownership questions after a loved-one dies is to give users an option of whether or not they would like the account terminated when they die.

The ambiguity of regulating electronic documents reinforces the fact that an option such as this should exist. And, if e-mail providers implement such measures, situations that cause unneeded stress on grieving family members could be avoided in the future.