Katie Hafner wrote a book about online death about a decade ago: http://www.amazon.com/The-Well-Seminal-Online-Community/dp/0...

It was triggered by the sudden death of one of the Well's prominent/prolific members, Blair Newman, which resulted in a lot of conversation about what happens to one's digital presence after death. In Blair's case, he had removed his content from the system and closed his account (as there were those who were bullying him) before his death. It was decided to restore the content (from backups) into a Memorial sub-conference for him not long after his death.