[Dragaera] Off-Topic Discussion: Occupy Wall Street

[phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 02:05:29PM -0500, Joshua Kronengold wrote:
> On 12/15/2011 01:52 PM, Philip Hart wrote:
> >I find this claim (that the private email was sent out of fear),
> >implication (that the quoted text was "filth") and general stance ("I
> >get to decide everyone's privacy policy") disappointing.
> 
> Your problem.  The custom to keep private email private is a matter
> of trust, not privacy or copyright.  It is almost always appropriate
> to publish letters sent to you, but it's usually rude.

Everything I can find online points to you being totally wrong here.
Legally, the copyright of a letter belongs to the author; the recipient
owns the copy, but not the right to publish it.  Typically the damages
one could sue for for illegal publication would be "not much", but the
law is still with the author.  And end to end, e-mails aren't different
than letters, not that the law has had a clear opinion about caching and
other technical details of electronic communication.

So technically, unilaterally copying someone's private e-mail to you is
illegal as well as rude.

-xx- Damien X-)