[Sussex] E-mail Disclaimers

[Geoff Teale]

Steve wrote:
-----------
> Legal question for you.
> 
> What is the legal status/validity of e-mail disclaimers?  

Contentious is a word.  You read a lot of stuff about e-mails, usage and the
rights of companies to monitor e-mails, etc.  Slowly but surely e-mail law
is coming into line with telephone law, which is appropriate in many cases
but has obvious mismatches at a technological level.

> My 
> company would
> like
> me to add the disclaimer (see [1] below); personally I 
> dislike disclaimers.

They're giving you an option?   How very odd.. most companies just bolt it
on as it passes through the mail server.

> Having
> read the text I have the following questions:
> 
> 1). As e-mail is copied from machine to machine as it 
> "travels" across the
>     Internet do I have to give permission to all e-mail 
> relays to forward my
>     e-mails?

No, this is normal handling.  In much the same way you don't have to give
permission to every postman who handles a letter, but (generally speaking)
they are not allowed to read your mail.

> 2). Do I have to give permission to the addressee to copy it 
> back to me?

Well, that's vague.  The material you produce is copyright to you except
where you are producing it on company business (where it can be considered
to intellectual property of Manhatten Associates).  Remeber my comments on
Ani DiFranco and the GPL?  The same applies here, the disclaimer is written
to support possible cases, it only stresses the things that they would want
to follow up on - this stuff is only as relevant as the copyright holders
intent to sue.   In your personal e-mail (ie. those to this list) I suggest
your intent to sue is non-existent and so this disclaimer is irrelevant.
Remeber of course that your rights as a copyright holder are actually there
implicitly - the disclaimer is just your company taking reasonable
precautions to make these things clear and to try and scare people away from
missuse of company information.

> 3). Do I have to give permission to the addressee to pass on 
> the information
> I
>     provide to their colleges which is what most of my 
> e-mails are for.

No. See above.  Rather you need to explicity state that they do _not_ have
permission to pass it on if that is the case.  Forwarding and replying could
be seen as normal behaviour and a court would treat it as such unless
efforts were made to indicate that the message is licensed without the right
to reproduce.  Authorisation need not be specific where there is no intent
to sue - if your client want explicit clarification then, yes, grant them
permission, but otherwise ignore it. 

> BTW - and just in case: I hereby grant the Sussex LUG mail 
> list to copy,
> modify,
> and distribute all e-mails from my MA email address to the 
> members of the
> list.

Very gracious of you, thanks ;)

> I also grant all current and future members of this list to 
> copy, modify and
> distribute all of my e-mails to whomever thus so wish.

Interesting license terms... you may as well say I hereby license my e-mails
under the BSD license ;)

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of
course, in a state of sin.
-- J. von Neumann


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