Digidave, I like your reflections but I know to little to give an answer on any of these scenarios. You are right, things have become more complicated with digital. It doesn't sound right to compare digital negatives with film negatives, but it should. It's the same content, only different media. Will these scenarios, especially number 3 be just as problematic if you had paper copies and/or film negatives instead?
I started thinking about MY digital negatives when I read your post. I have everything on my computer and on a backup disk at home. I also have everything backed up and encrypted on Jungledisk (Amazon S3). What if my house burns down and I die with the computer and backup disk? Nobody else knows the password on the S3 server nor the encryption key, hence all my negatives are lost forever. I won't become rich and famous post-mortem and my photographic legacy consist of a few low-res images on Flickr. Depressive thougts
