UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals “insane” say experts::Department hopes to save £4.5m a year by digitising – then binning – about 100m wills that date back 150 years

  • @[email protected]
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    011 months ago

    The cost of keeping paper records. Doing anything but keeping them is crackhead behavior, it’s like ripping copper pipes out of your walls and selling them to keep your electricity turned on. A society has failed if it reaches that point. I agree there’s more to it than expense, such as having a secured original that’s much more difficult to forge.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      Doing anything but keeping them is crackhead behavior, it’s like ripping copper pipes out of your walls and selling them to keep your electricity turned on. A society has failed if it reaches that point.

      I’m sorry but this wildly over simplifying the issue to the point that the copper pipe analogy and hyperbolic language isn’t useful. I respectfully hard disagree with this characterisation for the reasons I’ve explained in my other reply.

      Putting a will (or anything other legal documents) on paper must have seemed totally natural hundreds of years ago but at some point we need to accept that we have different needs for these documents and different ways of capturing them.

      I totally agree with you about security. That should be a principle in all of this. But that shouldn’t constrain us to recording on paper. If security is paramount then design a system whereby you can verify the veracity and authenticity of the digital document and create secured controls around their handling - hint these systems already exist today. Tampering and theft is certainly an issue but realistically so is it if you still had paper. It’s not uncommon for paper to burn, I have been told 😉.

      Any system is fallible, but that shouldn’t mean we remove it from consideration.

      • @[email protected]
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        -111 months ago

        But that shouldn’t constrain us to recording on paper.

        If you’re going to argue with me, spend less time on smug pontification and more time making sure you actually know what my point is.

        • @[email protected]
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          -111 months ago

          I’m not trying to argue with you 😔. I’m trying to have a conversation with you. There’s no need to be like that.