Re: Web Archive of Mailing List
Samuel Lewis (slewis@CompLaw.com)
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 21:31:42 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 21:31:42 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199606090131.VAA26154@foyer.homecom.com>
From: Samuel Lewis <slewis@CompLaw.com>
Subject: Re: Web Archive of Mailing List
At 10:55 PM 6/7/96 -0400, Joshua Marshall <joshua@collegehill.com> wrote:
>Well yes...and no. We are keeping a record of all the material posted to
>the list and are considering posting it as a public archive on the Lawyers'
>Web Ethics Forum (the companion site to this list). For now it is still in
>preparation (we've been very busy!!!). However, with reference to the
>recent thread on the netlawyers list, I would like to hear from subscribers
>whether they would want all our postings to be public. Would this inhibit
>the conversation?, etc. Would you find this a breach of the privacy of the
>list?, etc.
>
>Drop a line to the list or to me personally.
I've been copying messages to a separate message file, and have been using
hypermail to generate archives. While the web address has not been
disclosed yet, I'm tempted to announce this as the unofficial web archive of
the mailing list.
Lets face it, when you send a message to a mailing list, you are
participating in a very public discussion. How can anyone expect that
something sent to a mailing list and which is transmitted to 500+ people,
all of whom simply need to send a message in order to subscribe to the list,
is in any way private? This is about as public as you can get without
standind on a park bench and screaming the thoughts to the rest of the world.
If I sent an e-mail to one person I know, or a few people at a time, the
story might be different. I think a clear distinction can be made in the
nature of the list. If you were sending to a list that you knew to be
restricted, and you could reasonably know the people on the list (at least
who was likely to be on the list, i.e., the accounting department in a
corporate setting perhaps), there might be some expectation of privacy. But
when you send a message to a list that is freely open to the public, then
you have sent a message into a forum that is most certainly public. And
public messages are not entitled to any sort of expectation of privacy if
you freely put the message into the public forum.
There have been a few court cases dealing with the reasonable expectation of
privacy in e-mail in settings where the message is sent directly from one
person directly to another. The present state of the expectation of privacy
seems to be questionable. While I think that there should be a reasonable
expectation of privacy in e-mail, I don't see how it could possibly extend
to messages voluntarily released to the public.
Of course, this is just my two cents worth...
--Sam
____________________________________________________________________
Samuel Lewis, Attorney-at-Law : Romanik, Lavin, Huss & Paoli
slewis@CompLaw.com : Hollywood, Florida
http://www.CompLaw.com/~slewis : Phone: 954-922-4656
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