Re: Never ever send Pavel private mail unless you want him to publish it.

[Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no>]

Tim Smith wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, Stuart MacDonald wrote:
> 
>>I'm under the impression that postcards do not carry an expectation of
>>privacy due to their readability during transmission. I'd expect that
>>email would be found to have the similar lack of expectation were it
>>to be tested in court.
> 
> 
> That would cover disclosing information from email, but it wouldn't cover
> publishing copies of email.  The general opinion from lawyers and law
> students, when this has been discussed on misc.legal, has been that email
> would be treated similarly to regular mail.  So, copying the entire thing to
> a mailing list or usenet would probably be a copyright violation.  Quoting
> parts of it as part of an argument would probably be fair use.
> 
> It's almost always considered extremely rude to unilaterally take a private
> argument public, which should be enough to stop civilized people, regardless
> of the legal issues.

Rude in general - _assuming_ the writer is decent.

If someone ever send me a letter I consider rude or otherwise hostile enough
I will publish it in order to expose the writer as the bad guy he is.
That hasn't ever happened, but mail sent to me is mine - I can do with
it whatever I want.  Nobody should be able to harass via (e)mail and expect
that their victim will protect them by keeping their dirty little secret.
I certainly won't.

Wether such action is warranted in this case is another question though.

Helge Hafting