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

[Tim Smith]

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.

--Tim Smith