We received a cordial email last night from the CEO of Legacy.com, the online obituary site that is affiliated with 124 of the country's 150 largest newspapers. It features obituaries and Guest Books for more than two-thirds of people who die in the United States. In total, it services 800 newspapers in North America, Europe and Australia.
As our previous posts have noted, Legacy not only charges you for access to the obituaries you have written and paid handsomely to have published. It also -- without your knowledge or consent -- claims a sweeping array of rights with respect to your intellectual property and to details about your family. Its business model, plain and simple, is to make money from the writing, the stories and the grief of millions of people while giving NOTHING in return.
Judging from the email sent by Legacy's CEO, Stopher Bartol, either he is stupid or he thinks that we are.
