An Analysis Of Email Disclaimers 334
akintayo writes "Recently more amd more organisations have required email sent from their accounts to contain an attached disclaimer. This disclaimer is supposed to describe the recipient's rights to 'use' that email. This slate article analyzes the legality and impact of one such disclaimer, and finds it somewhat lacking."
Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be legally privileged and/or confidential and is intended only for the use of the addressee(s).
If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized disclosure, dissemination, distribution, copying or the taking of any action in reliance on the information herein is strictly prohibited.
If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete this message.
Now, while the lawyer notes that they are only asking you to do these things I see another flaw... If the document wasn't intended for the use by the addressee the rest of the notice is moot. It's up to the sender to guarantee that the message is delivered to the correct John.Doe@yahoo.com. I don't see how I would have to follow any of that if a) I didn't sign it and b) I am not the person they intended anyway.
No addressee should forward, print, copy, or otherwise reproduce this message in any manner that would allow it to be viewed by any individual not originally listed as a recipient.
If I am sent it incorrectly I am not allowed to look at it anyway. It doesn't make sense.
Then again IANAL
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
The stupid disclaimer at the bottom will certainly not work if the person messes up and sends it to another country... Just because my email address is
addressing (Score:5, Insightful)
That's if it wasn't addressed to you, and you open it. If it has your name and address on it, you're perfectly correct to open it; it is legally -your- mail. Email MUST be addressed to you to get to you, unless something gets REALLY screwed up, and you're not going to notice until you open the email, because unlike postal mail, you don't usually see the To: address until you open it.
Furthermore, email isn't like a physical letter; it doesn't remain sealed, you can't tell if it has been read, etc. People with the same street number and similar sounding roads get their mail delivered to me all the time; I toss it back in my mailbox. They probably can't even tell it was misdelivered, unless they were expecting it on a specific date.
Everyone has known for years the disclaimers are unenforceable; you can't enforce something you haven't agreed to or signed, period. What's to stop me from putting "You will give me $500 if you read this email" at the bottom of every email? We're talking basic contractual law here, folks.
Re:addressing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite wrong, actually. The United States Postal Service has special laws protecting its operations. One of them is that it is a felony to interfere with the delivery of mail once it has entered the postal system, which is in effect until a letter or parcel arrives at its intended recipient or is returned to the sender. This is, however, not the case with email. A communication by email has roughly the same legal protection as shouting across a room.
As the author of TFA points out, a business that actually wants to protect its communications ought to use encryption and digital signatures.
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Far back in the mists of time, or about 1994 as the more prosaic prefer to call it, I was part of my then employer's Internet Special Interest Group. Amongst other things, we decided the final version of the disclaimer which would be attached to our emails.
We had a rule that anything more than four lines was absolutely unnacceptable. It annoyed the recipients, was too long for most people to read and had only questionable enforcement value anyway. It was a fairly common rule of thumb at the time, but as you say it appears to have been abandoned.
I work at one of the banks in London, and a friend of mine works at a different bank nearby. An email from me sent via my personal account starts 'Fancy lunch?'. The mail from him usually says "Yep - 12ish?" followed by about fifteen lines of utter, unenforcable gibberish. No-one reads it, and if they did there'd be no legal basis for it anyway.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:2, Interesting)
[FX type, deep male voice] "Next on Fox, When Lawyers Collide!"
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. Not totally related to what you've said, but it reminded me of it. At my previous job, somebody sent an email to my office mate. It was meant for me. He tapped my shoulder and said "Well I think this email was supposed to be for you, but the disclaimer says I cannot show it to anybody that it's not intended for." So I read his disclaimer, and he was right. By forwarding it to me, he'd violate those terms. Heh we had a chuckle at that.
So how'd it end? Not very excitingly, really. We just used a little common sense, assumed he wouldn't care, and forwarded the message to me anyway.
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that...the taking of any action in reliance on the information herein is strictly prohibited.
It then tells you:
If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete this message.
Wouldn't notifying the sender be taking an action based on the information contained therein, and thus be expressly prohibited?
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't notifying the sender be taking an action based on the information contained therein, and thus be expressly prohibited?
I get a laugh out of them making it my responsiblity to make sure the sender didn't type the wrong address. If I'm not the intended recipient, then how did I get it? If the To: header isn't necessarily the intended recipient, then how am I supposed to know who is and that it isn't me? If it's so important, why aren't you being more careful who you send it to?
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, that makes the contract null and void, I think, but....
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its another example of nonsense int he real world.. of course I *am* the intended recipient of every email I get, otherwise the sender would have sent it to someone else. Of course, you could say that you accidentally sent it to me instead of who you meant to send it to.. but how am I supposed to know that? I don't read minds.
I can guess, but that's hardly going to stand up in court, now is it?
Once I worked at a company that had email addresses that were firstname+last initial. Mine was AndrewB. One of the directors was AndyB.
Yes, you guessd right - I received an email once saying "Andy, do you want this quarters bonus of (several thousand pounds) paid as salary or into your pension?". I was overjoyed.. several thousand pounds in addition to my salary, yes please. I only wondered why they hadn't announced this wonderful new bonus scheme to us in some corporate communication......
I never got the cash, but it was addressed to me, had my name at the top, everything.
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:4, Insightful)
Its another example of nonsense int he real world.. of course I *am* the intended recipient of every email I get, otherwise the sender would have sent it to someone else. Of course, you could say that you accidentally sent it to me instead of who you meant to send it to.. but how am I supposed to know that? I don't read minds.
I can guess, but that's hardly going to stand up in court, now is it?
Well, here's what I normally see.. Some moron at a bank or law office or whatever forwards a lame joke to like 20 of their buddies, with full legal disclaimer attached. The 20 recipients then go on to forward it to 1000 aol accounts and everyone else in their address books, and somewhere down the line a "friend" that I haven't talked to in 4 years but has me in his address book forwards it along to me and everyone else in his address book. I now have a lame joke about 6 generations removed from the original sender but the full disclaimer about how I'm not supposed to read the email still attached. Funny thing is, the disclaimer is at the BOTTOM of the email.. Tell me how I am supposed to UNREAD the lame joke after I see the disclaimer...
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:2)
Even more annoying is one I've seen that's html based. It has a pretty little gif border, pointers, and big company logo attached. So when my friend send me an email saying, `are you coming to the party on Saturday?' the whole email is 10k in size.
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Interesting)
Email is basically a post card. If you get a post card in the mail, you can legally read it, if it's even legible, as you're not tampering with it.
If, however, you receive something incorrectly addressed in an envelope, you may not legally open it (in the US anyways). This would be akin to an encrypted (the envelope) email. The mis-addressed recipient would not be able to read it easily, or even practically. The envelope (encryption) is a much stronger enforcement of the "authorized person only may open this mail".
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
What if the street address is correct, but the name is not? Can one legally open it?
Also, is it legal to discard mail that is addressed to people not resident at that address (for example: former residents at that address) without reading it?
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no mandate on Usenet signatures. Same as there is no mandate on top-posting and quoting.
It's all voluntary. If the poster doesn't follow the guidelines (which is what they are) the worst that can happen is that they don't potentially get all the possible responses they could (or they get a couple of extra rude ones they didn't expect).
In short, newsgroup etiquette on signatures, quoting and top-posting doesn't work and it wou
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
It was a rather weird case, and it bounced between the courts for a while, but I think the final verdict was that the squatter w
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Insightful)
The purpose of the message is to "use" the people to whom it has been sent. This clearly shows the solicitation of services, and as such gives permission to bill the sender for my time spent reading it.
No addressee should forward, print, copy, or otherwise reproduce this message in any manner that would allow it to be viewed by a
Re:Limit this crap to four lines... (Score:3, Funny)
More correctly I think it's a 'dag-tag' [netlingo.com].
Mail User License Agreement (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the reasons a lot of companies automatically put the disclaimers / nonsense on the bottom of the email is that it provides them with somewhat of a means of liability protection from information that was sent or processed from their systems, lets not also forget the confidentiality or rather the breaches of, that email allow to happen so frequently and readily.
Lastly, later if heaven forbid (!) a scandal hits the office involving a lower or sometimes high level employee, emails (which like any segment of a well defined network) may be called up from archives for an investigation internally or externally in a court of law. Stating the MULA on the bottom of correspondence, while generally accepted in people_to_people terms as fodder, is actually a wise move for a corporation to show its partners, employees, and potential revenue sources the fact that they place internal memos and all communications in the same manner that they would (as any entity with a sense of self preservation) deem a legal document.
Re:Mail User License Agreement (Score:4, Interesting)
The funny part about all this is that the most prevelant abuse you will see with one of these happy disclaimers at the bottom is an email that an employee has sent to themselves at their AO-hel-L address to work on at home and then forward back to work once it is complete. You can pretty much guaruntee it will be an HR person and it is going to have HIPAA or SarbanesOxley information in it and that no number of disclaimers is going to stop the impending lawsuit if it ends up posted to the web or in some Phishers hands.
Email to govt in Texas becomes public record. (Score:5, Informative)
What if I don't read the entire message? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would think that I would have to not only read something binding; but agree to it as well before I could actually be bound by it.
Re:Mail User License Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mail User License Agreement (Score:3, Funny)
You hereby agree to the MAUL imposed with this message. If you do not agree to this MAULing and continue reading then we will send somebody around for a Better Educated Assessment Test (BEATing).
Dumbest disclaimer? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, it was at the bottom of the e-mail.
Re:Dumbest disclaimer? (Score:2)
Re:Dumbest disclaimer? (Score:2)
Where I live, anything that is sent to me, having my name/address in headers makes me legal recipient. As such I have all rights to the correspondence, including publishing it on the web or street corner. The sender may *kindly* ask me to refrain from doing so, but I'm not required to. The only way it might hold would be if the email contained state secrets, maybe.
So these disclaimers really lack Void where prohibited at the end
Re:Dumbest disclaimer? (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting. (Score:3, Insightful)
You would think with the big bucks that companies shell out for attorneys they would have come up with something more workable or just not bother if it doesn't actually protect them. But then again, spreading FUD can be effective too I guess...
Re:Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you have any reason to protect the contents of the email, use encryption (for the eavesdropper), use some verification (for the unintended recipient), and make your intended recipient sign an NDA before you send them emails with sensitive info in them.
I'll be forwarding this article to my boss, who has recently added a similar statement to his sig.
If you have received this message in error... (Score:5, Interesting)
IOW, tacking a too-bad-if-you-looked legal threat to the end of your email does not establish any sort of contract between us.
Re:If you have received this message in error... (Score:2)
If you opened a paper mail (or package!) meant for your neighbors, but accidentally shipped to your box instead, you would be committing a federal crime in the US, the exception being certain authorities when they have established probable cause or have a warrant.
I don't know how other countries handle it but I imagine that it is common.
Re:If you have received this message in error... (Score:5, Informative)
If you receive something unsolicited in the US Mail (which includes something addressed to you by accident, but not addressed to someone else and simply left in the wrong mailbox), you are free to do with it as you wish. The sender cannot compel you to obey any license agreement or follow any restrictions they might wish to place on its use, within the bounds of the law. (That is, you can't go out and beat someone up with a billy club someone sends you in the mail, because that would otherwise violate the law, but you're free to use it as a billy club even if the company who sent it to you says it's a sex toy for cows.)
There was a great deal of discussion about this back when DigitalConvergence (remember them?) was sending unsolicited CueCats to people and then suing them for taking them apart and hacking them.
Some info on that situation:
http://www.beau.lib.la.us/~jmorris/linux/cuecat/ [lib.la.us]
http://air-soldier.com/~cuecat/ [air-soldier.com]
http://www.xmission.com/~rebling/pub/cuecat.html [xmission.com]
http://www.logorrhea.com/cuecat/mirrors.html [logorrhea.com]
More on Google; search for "CueCat."
p
Re:If you have received this message in error... (Score:2)
I see a loophole here for software shrink wrap agreements. I receive several pieces of unsolicited software in the mail from AOL, regularly. Does this mean that I have agreed to nothing and may do anything I wish with them, including disassembly, reverse engineering, duplication, modification, and distribution?
Re:If you have received this message in error... (Score:5, Informative)
Originally, people had the legal obligation to return the goods or to pay for them. The companies would make it so hard to return the goods that it was easier to just pay the bill.
In response, Congress came up with a reasonable law that just made the problem go away. Amazing.
Re:If you have received this message in error... (Score:3, Funny)
I've been trying to convince a friend that we need to start a business providing a legitimate (ie, you'd actually be able to use it) service that nobody needs or wants and just "sign people up" for it and send them bills. Those that paid the bill got their accounts left active, and those who didn't pay the first two bills we'd cancel until we tried them again.
The business we thought we'd set up was "internet service" -- buy a P
Re:If you have received this message in error... (Score:2)
However, if you continue to get e-mails that you're not supposed to get and you don't take a pro-active action to stop them, then you are accepting the information that you're being given... and in financial land if that's insider information and you take action on it, that's insider trading.
I think that's the real point of such disclaimers. If you're not the person this e-mail was supposed to go to, you've intercepted it and if you cont
Re:If you have received this message in error... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know that I completely agree with that. I get hundreds of messages a day that are filtered to my spam folder. I may or may not ever read or even look at the subjects.
There is a much older Ressource ... (Score:5, Informative)
oh no (Score:2)
Its All Mine! (Score:3, Informative)
Therefore you can forward emailed confidential information as much as you like!
Note of course that true email goes through SMTP across the net, not just through some companies mail server.
stupid disclaimers (Score:5, Funny)
(Lifted from http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/ [goldmark.org])
HIPAA (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not only email disclaimers (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldnt trust that message any more than I would trust an executable attachment because for all I know a virus could email itself to me with a message saying "This email is virus free" in the hopes I unplug my brain before running the attachment.
BTW, returning to the topic for a minute, email disclaimers piss me off when they tell me what I can and can't do with an email I received. Er... excuse me but if someone sends an email to me by mistake I will do whatever the fuck I like with it, thank you very much! :P
Re:It's not only email disclaimers (Score:2)
Re:It's not only email disclaimers (Score:2)
That reminds me of another piece of social engineering which, for some reason, women seem to fall for more than men:
Every so often I receive either a joke email, or a sentimental vomit-inducing friendship-type, with a message at the end saying "Send this to 5 people in your address book and a love heart will appear on your screen" or "If you send this to 7 people in the next 7 hours
CRUNCHOMATIC .SIG COMPACTOR (Score:2)
You'll have to follow the link to see the signature crunching in all its glory...
Legal != Sensible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legal != Sensible (Score:2)
Probably not binding [Was:Legal != Sensible] (Score:3, Insightful)
But I doubt that these would hold up in court, and have even argued that they may make you more vulnerable [goldmark.org] legally.
Re:Legal != Sensible (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm currently taking a course in business law. These disclaimers are theoretically a contract, so let's examine them to see if they are valid:
Contracts have four requirements to be valid:
- Agreement
- Consideration
- Capacity
- Legality
Agreement: Even if you have a previous business relationship with the sender, this "disclaimer" would constiture new terms, and thus be considered terms for a new contract. The recipient is under no obligation to accept.Consideration: The sender is offering nothing of value in return for acceptance. Courts usually don't look fondly upon one-sided contracts.
Capacity: The recipient may have contractual capacity (age, mental competance, etc), or they may not. In the case of an email transmission, capacity of both parties is unknown.
Legality: The terms of the contract must be legal. Courts usually frown on contracts that reduce the constitutional rights of the offeree, especially if the offeror wields an undue amount of power.
Summary: Take this "contract" before a Judge and it will be laughed out of court.
Disclaimer: IANAL
Is this article broken for anybody else? (Score:2)
Still, interesting article. Looks like this is about as enforcible as those stupid non-disclosure agreements all the
Re:Is this article broken for anybody else? (Score:2)
I'd suspect the ad blocking, as Microsoft are surely not _that_ dumb. Unless you failed to get a stylesheet due to ye olde Slafhdote effecte.
Lazy quoting and lack of snippage (Score:2)
These are foolish (Score:3, Informative)
I don't imagine that you will have a good outcome in court when you ask the judge to sanction one reader who violated the warning. Your honor, here are ten e-mails that the same person sent to mailing lists with the same warning, how can I take the warning seriously when the sender doesn't?
Re:These are foolish (Score:2)
I suspect the reply would be something along the lines of:
No, it doesn't have to make sense to the mythical "man in the street", just so long as it makes sense to the lawyer
spam too (Score:5, Funny)
This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you have received this message in error, you are hereby notified that we do not consent to any reading, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately and destroy the transmitted information.
Of course, all the header info is forged, so now I'm freaking out since I can't get in touch with them to let them know that this sensitive penis creme enlargement trade secret information may have fallen into the wrong hands!
Re:spam too (Score:4, Informative)
Favorite disclaimer: (Score:5, Funny)
The goatse.cx lawyer has informed us that we need a warning! So.. if you are under the age of 18 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!
I fail to see the humor in this Thread (Score:2)
This message is the property of Notestein or its affiliates. It may be legally privileged and/or confidential and is intended only for the use of this thread(s). No thread reader should forward, print, copy, or otherwise reproduce this post in any manner that would allow it to be viewed by any individual not originally listed as a reader of this thread. If the reader of this post is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized disclosure
My new sig (Score:2, Redundant)
They are a waste of space (Score:3)
Anyone ever estimate how much space these things are wasting on servers all over the US (I'm assuming this is unique to the US)?
At the bottom of my faxes: (Score:2)
What's funny is I just copied it from an attor
What is the legal basis? (Score:5, Funny)
To realy get them, why not add the following reply to your SMTP HELO response on your mailserver: "Any email sent to this system is considered the personal property of Foobar, and all rights and copyrights associated with said email are automatically assigned to Foobar. Your use of this system constitutes acceptance of this agreement."
It would be just as ridiculous as the email signatures.
Even with no disclaimer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not too long ago I was having a bit of an e-mail battle with a professor and as many of what he said was flat out wrong, I put up a small webpage with the unabridged text of the e-mails for other students in the class to read so they would be aware of the problems I had raised which concerned them all.
The professor later threatened to sue me for "libel, slander and defamation" because of the "publication of our confidential and private e-mail conversations", even though there was no disclaimer or even an assumption of privacy.
Thankfully, given a number of illegal things he had done in the e-mails (IE blowing off FERPA), any such case would have been thrown out quite quickly.
When I told this story to my father, he told me a quote he heard long ago:
"Never put something in a letter that you don't want the other guy's lawyer holding up in court"
The moral of this story: Disclaimer or not, don't write anything in an e-mail, letter, diary, word document that you don't want getting out.
Who reads them (Score:2)
I ignore these just like I ignore flashing ad banners, George Bush, and non-residential speed limits.
Mission Impossible (Score:4, Funny)
This email will self destruct your computer in 5 seconds!
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
If not using Outlook, Please click on attachment "EvilVirus.vbs"
A mailing list I am on has a disclaimer. (Score:2)
Article copyright (c) IBMWR and the author(s). All rights reserved.
Unsubscribe directions at http://www.ibmwr.org/faq-files/mail.shtml#SUB
** *
This was done because a company was repackaging the e-mail messages of this mail list. If anything the disclaimer can be used to stop unlawful reproduction.
It would be akin to receiving the secret formulae to Coke with a disclaimer/legalese at the bottom and posting it. The results would be interesting.
Do these disclaimers have more weight if the e-mail is res
What next disclaimers on slahshot messages (Score:2, Funny)
This message is property of ad0gg or his affiliates. No moderator should mod down this message in any form or manner. No poster should use in whole or in part this message, if poster intent is to slander the owner of the message.
Whatever. (Score:4, Funny)
ATTENTION: If your name is not John P. Smith, by reading this message you agree to shove a pen in your eye.
Disclaimers instead of crypto (Score:2)
Official Celebrity Disclaimers (Score:5, Funny)
Michael Jackson-"This message is inteneded for receipients 12 and under. Otherwise please disregard without reading."
George W. Bush -"Any email from Iraq will be considered a WMD, weapon of mass dissemination, and will be immediately acted upon with extreme prejudice"
Tony Blair-"Whatever George said."
James Earl Jones-"Will do any film for $9999.95."
George Lucas-"Any message sent from this server can be freely used as a plot device in an upcoming special effects driven feature without any additional payment. Besides, it may make Episode III better." Bill Clinton-"I never said that." Bill Gates -"Cross us an we will crush you, unless it gets press, which nets you an X-Box for the crushing."
longest disclaimer (Score:2, Informative)
longest email disclaimer [theregister.co.uk]
Most incomprehensible [theregister.co.uk]
Original article [theregister.co.uk]
(All obligingly and typically repeated in full..!)
Extreme example (Score:3, Funny)
NOTICE: This communication and any files transmitted with it ("communication") may contain privileged or other confidential information. This communication is intended solely for the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, or believe that you have received this communication in error, please do not print, copy, retransmit, disseminate, or otherwise use this communication. Also, please indicate to the sender that you have received this communication in error, and then delete this communication and any copies. Thank you.
And for some reason our admins are complaining about the amount of space that our e-mail servers consume....
Meeting of the Minds (Score:2)
Re:Meeting of the Minds (Score:3, Informative)
Counterproductive at best... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is especially true considering the enforceability of these disclaimers, or rather lack thereof, when the recipient is subject to a different jurisdiction.
A few weeks ago I had to personally deal with email disclaimers. An acquaintance of mine had sent an email containing his company's email footer to multiple recipients at the same site (a big company) which neither of them ever received. Turns out, the spam filter caught the email and dropped it because of its low content-to-repetition (read garbage) ratio.
I suspect (Score:3, Interesting)
Liability Insurance for the Company (Score:3, Interesting)
Most internal correspondence dealing with company secrets and assests have similar disclaimers ranging from the simple "confidential" to multi-line legalese. Consider finding a document with truly important information in a dumpster.
Legally the document could be read by anyone as it's in a public place. If there is no disclaimer the information could be redistributed as the recipient has no idea if the information is confidential or not.
However, if the document was labeled confidential, copyrighted , whatnot, could taint anyone who redistrbutes or uses it, such as competitors.
The same analogy could be applied to email messages with disclaimers. Would it hold up in court or lessen the damage to the company that accidently sent it to the wrong party? Probably not. But it does show that the company does have some inkling, no matter how small, of classifying information assets.
cat .signature (Score:3, Funny)
My disclaimer (Score:5, Funny)
My reply (Score:5, Funny)
I have received numerous email messages with your company standard disclaimer on the bottom. I hereby notify you that to my best knowledge, I have not signed any non-disclosure agreements with you. Therefore I am free to publish, disseminate, discuss, and use the information in said mails as I damn well please.
As a reasonable person, I am willing to find a compromise. If you compensate for my time and trouble, I am willing to send you copies of said emails. Let's say $100 a piece, or $20000 for the whole pile. After that you can make me an offer for a non-disclosure agreement, and if I find the terms agreeable, I may even sign it.
As a courtesy, I will remain relatively quiet about those mails and about this correspondance, for the next seven days. After that, I make no promises.
Yours sincerely
J.Random Luser
Not at my work. (Score:3, Funny)
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other issues (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the commentary has ignored a few important points:
(a) if there were ever legal action over an email (say, for example, that you described something important in the email, and the person used it elsewhere), the fact that you have a disclaimer makes it _stronger_ evidence in the court, that would make damages and remedies much easier: the defendent would not be able to claim "d'oh, I did not know" or argue some other implied license, etc. Often the disclaimer is just explictly stating what is already implicit: because what's implicit to me is not always considered that by you: which is why we have written contracts to make all the details clear.
(b) on the issue of confidentiality: it _is_ true that there is no confidentiality in unsolicited messages, thus the "disclosure" disclaimer is junk, _however_ there is always copyright in your email, so while the recipient may be able to generally disclose what they obtained, that may not disclose the _actual detail_ of it without violating your copyright.
On point (b) is a good example: a lawyer sends you an unsolicited C&D with a disclaimer: you are actually free to run around and tell people about what happened, but if you actually _reproduce_ the entire C&D itself verbatim, you would probably be violating the copyright in the letter.
Personally, I use disclaimers: because frankly some people are quite free and easy with forwarding emails off to other people when I am addressing a specific question to them, not to a general audience. Of course, I don't write anything that would offend other people, but in some cases, material has been forwarded out of context. There's really not much I can do, but if there ever _was_ a nasty situation, then at least I know that I've bought myself a _little_ insurance with some explicit disclaimer.
This is completly different (Score:3, Interesting)
But the main problem with these disclaimers is that they try to add restrictions on the way you may use the email.
And they cannot do this.
And when the disclaimer is essentially b*llsh*t, people CAN claim in court : "Well, there where these 41 unenforcable claims, how could I know that the 42th was enforcable?"
You may be right over point a), but this applies only to rights you already have over your email and the O
Re:from the i cant spell department.. (Score:2)
Re:from the i cant spell department.. (Score:2)
Re:from the i cant spell department.. (Score:2)