Re: Programming Contest: BoxifyMe
James Dow Allen wrote:
(2) Skybuck: Publishing private e-mails without permission is
an etiquette No-no. (And perhaps even illegal in some cases!)
I doubt that it's illegal. Email is by definition not private. Given the
impossibility of expectation of privacy, you'd have a hard time establishing
any tort, much less crime. If the person had signed a non-disclosure
agreement with you you might establish a civil wrong, but they didn't, did they?
So publish away, other person.
I'm happy, and grant permission to publish my e-mail to you.
But you may want to be more cautious in future.
Only for courtesy's sake, but then, did you ask them to keep the material
confidential? If not, then they were completely within their rights.
If you were to publish an email I sent you "privately", without a
non-disclosure agreement and absent my request to you to keep the contents
confidential, I would not even view that as an etiquette violation. I see
that you do, but you may want to be more cautious in the future about
representing your opinion as a universal truth.
--
Lew