For me the key question (unclear from that Rosenbaum piece) is whether Dmitri ever agreed to destroy it! If he agreed to do so, of course he should, as unhappy as that would make all of the people who want to read it. If he didn't... I'm not sure. It seems like the main reason for carrying out posthumous wishes is to uphold a societal norm of doing so, with the hope that people will fear death less if they expect to still be respected after it happens to them. Waiting for decades and publicly fretting about the decision is almost as good as burning the notes, for that purpose.

What's the difference between a posthumous wish and a semi-posthumous agreement? (I am assuming that this wish/agreement was not written in any sort of legal document.)

I think people have an ethical duty to honor agreements they've made; not that it can't be outweighed by other things, but I think it's there. I don't believe the same duty attaches to a clause in someone's will assigning you a task you may or may not want.

Last night, I was reading the huuuuuge thread on the Mountain Goats message board about "Hail And Farewell, Gothenburg" (an album that Darnielle decided never to release, which leaked sometime last year, a decade after it was recorded). And what strikes me is that if Dmitri didn't take on this job voluntarily before his father died, any responsibility which he has to destroy the notes (which therefore comes solely from knowing his father would want things that way) is probably also a responsibility for readers not to READ the thing should it be published. Inheritance of intellectual property rights is already a bit weird; inheritance of moral rights doesn't even make sense.

I'm not sure what I think of that.

Hmm, that's an interesting angle. I've definitely shirked that responsibility before, having listened to the mass quantities of Old Tunes that were leaked out of the Boards of Canada early catalog several years back. Have you been able to resist "Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg?"