Re: "scanning" e-mail [WAS: 3 Free Gmail invites]
From owner-nanog@merit.edu Thu Aug 19 12:58:57 2004 Cc: Patrick W Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> From: Patrick W Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> Subject: "scanning" e-mail [WAS: 3 Free Gmail invites] Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:55:46 -0400 To: nanog@nanog.org
On Aug 19, 2004, at 1:39 PM, Lou Katz wrote:
On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 10:13:29PM -0700, Jonathan Nichols wrote:
Joshua Brady wrote:
I've got 2 Gmail invites up for grabs for the first 2 to email me offlist.
You know, I'm having trouble finding people that *don't* have gmail.com accounts already. :P
Because G-mail scans INCOMING mail without the sender's consent, we will NEVER have a G-mail account and have considered blocking them. We actively discourage our clients from using this service. If you want to let a service scan YOUR mail, it is your perogative, but you cannot give them permission to scan MY mail to you.
I believe your last statement is factually incorrect. I absolutely _can_ do anything I please with "your" e-mail you send to me. Not only that, I also believe I _may_ do it. You send me e-mail, the e-mail is now mine.
Well, legally, "yes, and no".
I can post it publicly,
You _cannot_ legally do that. copyright infringement.
put it into a search engine, or deleted it, and you have no say in the matter. Might not be polite, but it certainly it not illegal. Don't like it, don't send me e-mail. (Please. :)
You own the 'artifact' that is the message, the 'intellectual property rights' (i.e. "copyright") remain with the author/sender. Doing thing with the message that require consent of the copyright holder are things you cannot do _without_ that consent. :) 'Private use' copying is _not_ one of those things, however.
Google is simply indexing mail for their users as a service - an unobtrusive, completely benign service just like virus checking or procmail scripts which have been used for years. And it certainly does not require the consent of the sender. How I manage my mailbox is MY business. You have exactly zero say over whether I let Google do it or Mail.app.
THAT is entirely correct.
Perhaps you are worried that Google will read your e-mail? Or maybe let others read it? Well, I hope you never send e-mail to anyone who does not run their own dedicated mail server on their own dedicated hardware and encrypt the SMTP session. 'Cause you are worried about something that has been happening for decades. (Plus I think you have to be more than a little arrogant to think anyone at Google gives a fart about the e-mail you send.)
But hey, it's your e-mail, send it or not as you please. I like the idea behind G-mail, I just can't deal with a web-based e-mail client. You don't, then don't use it.
Just please don't spout factual fallacies like saying I can't give someone permission to do things to my inbox.
-- TTFn, patrick
On Aug 19, 2004, at 2:24 PM, Robert Bonomi wrote:
I can post it publicly,
You _cannot_ legally do that. copyright infringement.
put it into a search engine, or deleted it, and you have no say in the matter. Might not be polite, but it certainly it not illegal. Don't like it, don't send me e-mail. (Please. :)
You own the 'artifact' that is the message, the 'intellectual property rights' (i.e. "copyright") remain with the author/sender.
Doing thing with the message that require consent of the copyright holder are things you cannot do _without_ that consent. :)
'Private use' copying is _not_ one of those things, however.
This is not at all clear to me, and has been argued differently by different people - including more than one JD. I also know several companies / people who post e-mail publicly. Hell, NANOG has public, searchable archives. Does that mean Merit is violating the law? Either way, the argument stands just fine if you remove the "post it publicly" part. -- TTFN, patrick
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Robert Bonomi wrote:
I believe your last statement is factually incorrect. I absolutely _can_ do anything I please with "your" e-mail you send to me. Not only that, I also believe I _may_ do it. You send me e-mail, the e-mail is now mine.
Well, legally, "yes, and no".
I can post it publicly,
You _cannot_ legally do that. copyright infringement.
put it into a search engine, or deleted it, and you have no say in the matter. Might not be polite, but it certainly it not illegal. Don't like it, don't send me e-mail. (Please. :)
You own the 'artifact' that is the message, the 'intellectual property rights' (i.e. "copyright") remain with the author/sender.
Doing thing with the message that require consent of the copyright holder are things you cannot do _without_ that consent. :)
'Private use' copying is _not_ one of those things, however.
Are you saying that those ridiculous boilerplate disclaimers similar to the following that annoyingly appear tagged to email (including that sent to public mailing lists) really mean something? NOTICE: This communication may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, or believe that you have received this communication in error, you are obligated to kill yourself and anyone else who may have read it. So there. My disclaimer is scarier than yours. Nyaah. You started this silly nonsense. Knock it off and I will too, ok? Nobody reads it anyway. You're not actually reading this, are you? I didn't think so. -- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay@west.net WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 WB6RDV NetLojix Communications, Inc. - http://www.netlojix.com/
On Aug 19, 2004, at 3:06 PM, Jay Hennigan wrote:
Are you saying that those ridiculous boilerplate disclaimers similar to the following that annoyingly appear tagged to email (including that sent to public mailing lists) really mean something?
[SNIP] I got complete agreement from every JD about the disclaimers at the bottom - they cannot tell you after you have received the e-mail that you cannot keep the e-mail. Someone sends you something, it is yours. Period. (Of course, every single one then back-peddled and talked about how nothing is certain if it goes to court and typical CYA Lawyer BS.) So at least the part about "if you are not the intended recipient, I get your first born 'cause you already read the e-mail before seeing this disclosure" is complete and utter BS. -- TTFN, patrick
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Patrick W Gilmore wrote:
On Aug 19, 2004, at 3:06 PM, Jay Hennigan wrote:
Are you saying that those ridiculous boilerplate disclaimers similar to the following that annoyingly appear tagged to email (including that sent to public mailing lists) really mean something?
[SNIP]
I got complete agreement from every JD about the disclaimers at the bottom - they cannot tell you after you have received the e-mail that you cannot keep the e-mail. Someone sends you something, it is yours. Period. (Of course, every single one then back-peddled and talked about how nothing is certain if it goes to court and typical CYA Lawyer BS.)
So at least the part about "if you are not the intended recipient, I get your first born 'cause you already read the e-mail before seeing this disclosure" is complete and utter BS.
i got told otherwise, but again this hasnt been tested in a court by me. i forget the exact detail in the conversation but it was comparing the disclaimer to what you get in regular mail.. so things like confidentiality, opening an attachment meaning you agree to things are allegedly okay. as you say tho this cannot be extended to some things such as by reading this you owe me $1m etc but the reasonable and logical bits are allegedly enforceable to some degree Steve
On Aug 20, 2004, at 9:25 AM, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
i got told otherwise, but again this hasnt been tested in a court by me. i forget the exact detail in the conversation but it was comparing the disclaimer to what you get in regular mail.. so things like confidentiality, opening an attachment meaning you agree to things are allegedly okay.
Maybe the UK is different than the US. But if I get something addressed to me in the mail (dunno about it if it was addressed to someone else and accidentally delivered), it is MINE. Period. If I did not order it, too damned bad, I get to keep it, it's a gift. Bringing this back on topic, IFF that can be extended to e-mail (and my understanding is that it can), the disclaimer is worthless - at least the part about having to delete it. There is some question about whether I can post it publicly (as you saw earlier), and I don't have the motivation to test it in court, but I certainly feel perfectly comfortable reading the contents of the e-mail and any attachments, and doing whatever I like with the information, baring limitations set by any previous agreements (e.g. NDAs). Would anyone care to correct me on this? IANAL, and don't even play one on TV. :-)
as you say tho this cannot be extended to some things such as by reading this you owe me $1m etc but the reasonable and logical bits are allegedly enforceable to some degree
Unclear on why telling me I have to delete something you sent me is logical. Just the opposite, in fact. -- TTFN, patrick
On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 10:34:31 EDT, Patrick W Gilmore said:
Bringing this back on topic, IFF that can be extended to e-mail (and my understanding is that it can), the disclaimer is worthless - at least the part about having to delete it.
I often send the miscreants a pointer to Peter Guttmann's work on securely erasing magnetic media, and ask if they're willing to pay for the downtime of tracking down which blocks on the multiple terabytes of RAID-5 on our main mail hub need to be wiped out (remember - the block could have been allocated and then freed, so it gets interesting). Oh.. and would they care to pay for new backup tapes, because we'll have to restore them to a scratch area, erase the offending files, then make new tapes and destroy the old ones and wipe the temp disks.. Oh.. and second-order costs for people idled while we do the work... ;) I mean, if they're so worried that their screw-up will earn them an Ollie North: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/offdocs/reagan/chron.txt they should pay for the clean-up, right? :) (And yes - I am *fully* aware that we don't take a second of downtime if we lose a disk on a hot-swap RAID-5, as it auto-hot-swaps and rebuilds onto a spare and then asks for help.. recovering from one failing drive in a raidset is *not* symmetric with intentionally trying to nuke possibly-moving data off all the volumes concerned.. ;)
participants (5)
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Jay Hennigan -
Patrick W Gilmore -
Robert Bonomi -
Stephen J. Wilcox -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu