Legality of Posting Received E-Mail to Netnews?

[Gary Heston]

In article <1991Jun19.135529.25984 at mlb.semi.harris.com> dcb at dave.mis.semi.harris.com writes:
>Recently we had a minor Notes (similar to Netnews - general access
>to postings but limited to our company) war. A manager responded
>to one of the parties involved via direct E-Mail. This party posted the
>E-Mail message to the "world" and followed it with comments about it's
>patronizing tone...

>Besides the obvious ethical problems,  are there any legal ramifications
>to this action?

As long as the authorship was properly attributed, there would be no
violation of copyright laws, I think. Otherwise, unless the company 
had guaranteed privacy under the ECPA, I don't see anything illegal
about it. You could have your corporate counsel look into it.

BTW, I think it's more a matter of convention, rather than ethics,
where posting of email is concerned.

-- 
Gary Heston   System Mismanager and technoflunky   uunet!sci34hub!gary or
My opinions, not theirs.    SCI Systems, Inc.       gary at sci34hub.sci.com
I support drug testing. I believe every public official should be given a
shot of sodium pentathol and ask "Which laws have you broken this week?".