Foresight
on
Written by Jen Graziano, Attorney, Licensed Funeral Director
Obituary piracy is real and rampant. Funeral directors and supplemental staff can undoubtedly attest to a rise in phone calls from client families complaining or questioning how their loved one’s obituary ended up on a third party site. The presumption, often and unfortunately, is that a funeral home submission to the third party resulted in the online posting of an obituary. But such is rarely ever the case. Third party websites utilize AI to skim or scrape the obituary from a funeral home website, bypassing direct channels to syphon the information on the deceased. These third party sites operate for profit as they drive family and friends to view obituaries on their site where they also offer for purchase various memorial products. It is imperative that funeral home directors and staff maintain awareness of these third party threats and develop ways to protect themselves and their client families.
The main culprits taking center stage on obituary piracy are “Echovita” “Afterlife” and “Everhere” although the latter two have recently gone defunct. There are also AI-generated channels on YouTube entering the space in search of the same memorial commoditization. The way in which these third parties capture information is, in sum, utilizing automated web-scraping software or AI to harvest “tombstone data” (names, dates, and family details) the moment an official notice is published on a funeral home’s website. They circumvent copyright laws by not capturing the obituary verbatim, instead copying and pasting key facts and information. AI algorithms quickly rewrite the text of the obituary and the altered obits are posted on the third party sites. Through SEO, when friends and family search the deceased name they inadvertently stumble upon these third party sights where they can read the obit and be directed to their “stores” to purchase flowers, digital remembrance candles or other tangible memorial items.
SCI challenged perhaps the most notorious obituary pirate, Echovita, in a case that’s ongoing in a Texas trial court. In SCI Shared Resources LLC DM vs Echovita Inc, plaintiff contends “the Terms of Service prohibit any visitor or user of the Dignity Memorial Websites from (1) using any information on these websites for commercial purposes, or (2) reproducing or publishing any content from the Dignity Memorial Websites without the consent of the SCI Parties.” The case was kicked back to the lower court on technical appeals, but the crux of SCI’s plaintiff position was that Echovita violated the “Terms of Use” by skimming and lifting information off their obituary pages for republishing, and the terms of use on all of their sites expressly prohibited such appropriation.
Funeral homes need to perform a checkup of their websites to ensure there is language present to prevent third party appropriation and distribution of obituary data. Terms of use clauses such as those on SCI’s websites, are accessible to website visitors through clicking on a link where they are directed towards an express list of guidelines and prohibitions for the site. Terms of use may also be embedded on a site page. Many funeral home website providers have recently added the text of “This obituary is protected against unauthorized reproduction or redistribution without the funeral home’s or family’s consent” on the bottom of the individual obituary page. This simple sentence provides an express prohibition against the copying and republication of the obituary. It also demonstrates to a family that the funeral home is being proactive in addressing this situation. If you haven’t added a protective clause against obituary appropriation, you need to do so. Funeral homes that utilize non industry web hosts and developers must ensure that requisite copyright protected language is somewhere visible on their website. Although these express prohibitions can not stop the third party AI bots from gathering obituary data, they certainly lay the foundation for potential legal violations.
Obituaries written either by the funeral director of the family fall under this umbrella of intellectual property, and copyright laws come into play in this space. Although the third party sites seek to obfuscate culpability by not capturing the full obituary and rather skimming bits and pieces, clear disclaimers on our website prohibiting such are currently our only recourse. When a client family alerts the funeral home their loved one’s obituary has been detected on a third party site, the directors or staff should immediately send an email request to the third party site for immediate removal of the obituary. It is often difficult to communicate with these alternative sites but demonstrating our email attempts will show the family that we are employing our due diligence.
The ultimate goal of these sites are memorial product sales. They display the amended, often incorrect obituary at no cost, but once they attract users to the site the goal is to sell flowers and memorial products. We, on the front lines of death care know that we fight for every dollar we make in the arrangement room. With declining service revenues, funeral homes have become increasingly reliant on merchandise sales to bridge the gaps. The industry needs to form a protective barrier against these third parties that seek to invade our space and diminish our margins. Equal to our goal of protecting our bottom lines, however, should be our desire to protect our client families, those who are most vulnerable. The takeaway needs to be that there are legal, moral and financial implications of obituary piracy to which all funeral home personnel need to be aware and face with a measured response.