On Fri, Sep 04, 2015 at 06:59:36PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
Does anybody have a citation that legal disclaimers attached to publicly posted mail aren't null and void?
Disclaimers are invalid on their face because they're an attempt to unilaterally enforce contractual terms without a meeting of the minds -- something required for a valid contract. They're "adhesions", i.e., they're provisions so one-sided that it's immediately obvious that they've been dictated by one side and not agreed to by both as the result of some kind of bargaining or negotiation. The two best references I'm aware of in this regard are: Stupid E-mail Disclaimers and the Stupid Users that Use Them http://attrition.org/security/rants/z/disclaimers.html Quoting in part: "We can't help it--this really makes us nuts. When will these people learn? You transmitted your crappy mind-numbing message to us, in plain text, over the public internet. It's ours (and whoever is sniffing our mail) to do with as we please and you can't have it back, so piss off. We won't delete it, we will publish it, we will forward it, and there is nothing you can do about it. Go ahead, take us to court, but try to find a shred of legal precedent first, ok?" and: Don't Include Bogus Legalistic Boilerplate. http://www.river.com/users/share/etiquette/#legalistic Quoting in part: "First, such boilerplate contains useless adhesions, meaning the explicit and implied threats they make are particularly annoying. If you send something via email, the recipients (are you sure you aren't sending to a mailing list?) and anyone else who sees your clear text postcard in transit can undetectably and with full deniability do whatever they want with the information written on it in plain view. Even casual users of email know email is not a secure communications medium. Thus the threats in typical bogus legalistic boilerplate are naught but an attempt at highly improper intimidation. Demands made in this manner will be regarded as evidence of a hostile attitude on your part by a significant portion of recipients. The threats will negatively affect how your recipients perceive the other ideas in your message." ---rsk