Legality of Posting Received E-Mail to Netnews?

[John Burns]

dag at fciva.UUCP (Daniel A. Graifer) writes:

>I'm not a lawyer, but I believe I heard somewhere that mail, once sent, is
>considered to be property of the recipient unless the originator explicitly
>makes a prior claim of copyright.  (ie. If I send a copyrighted article I've
>written to a magazine editor, I don't loose my copyright by that action.)

No, the writer retains copyright unless explicitly transferred.  When you
submit an article to a journal that wants the copyright for itself they
make you sign a document transferring the copyright to them.  The document
itself is subject to ordinary property laws;  in the case of e-mail, the
medium is a computer that already belongs to someone.  In the case of
regular letters, the piece of paper belongs to the recipient, but the
copyright for the words written on it belongs to the writer.

Since the manager has the copyright, it's technically illegal to publish
it.  On the other hand, since the intent was to illustrate what the
manager's ideas (non-copyrightable) were, not to derive benefit from
publishing the particular expression (copyrighted), the grounds for a
lawsuit are extremely weak.

>Just as in spoken conversation, it's a private matter between the two parties.
>If you are told something that's explicitly in confidence, it's up to
>your sense of ethics whether or not it should be revealed to others.

Just so.  I don't think the law has a real foothold here until the manager
decides to fire the employee for insubordination, in which case the letter
and its republication may provide evidence for either side in a suit over
unjust termination.

Disclaimer:  I'm not a lawyer.  Harvard has enough already.

John A. Burns (burns at thurifer.harvard.edu, burns at huche1.bitnet)