The Great Zero Challenge

[Ian Batten]

On 8 Sep 2008, at 01:13, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

> Roland Perry wrote:
>> In article <3452E045-84B4-4ABA-A319-4D379CA1E44A@sourcetagged.ian.co.uk 
>> >, Ian Mason <ukcrypto@sourcetagged.ian.co.uk> writes
>>> I have the appended signature in my armoury for  replies to those  
>>> who send such ludicrous legalese.
>> I have one too - which seeks to illustrate that if you don't  
>> understand it, how can you comply?
>
> As I understand it, a disclaimer that a communication is legally  
> privileged may have some legal effect in preventing third parties  
> from divulging it.

I was told that the only reason to tag documents was so that if thing  
went nuclear and substantial discovery motions were served, it would  
make it easier to put to one side stuff that needn't be handed over.   
I'm told it's unlikely for a document to be legally privileged unless  
either the sender or one of the recipients is a lawyer engaged upon  
the matter at hand.

>
> However if you send me a disclaimer attached to a communication, I  
> can just ignore it - I haven't agreed to keep it secret, and am  
> perfectly at liberty to repeat the sense of the contents, though if  
> eg it's a poem I may not have copyright to the expression, and then  
> I can't reproduce it exactly.

The key piece of nonsense from those footers is the `act on' bit that  
seems popular.  It's hard to imagine outside narrowly drawn exceptions  
in finance and legal proceedings how you can send me information which  
it's in any way illegal for me to act on.  It may be immoral and  
ungentlemanly, but that's a separate argument.

>
> However if it has come into the hands of third party by chance, or  
> by some other means not involving interception, then I'm not so  
> sure. Obviously posting to usenet implies that a communication can  
> be freely reproduced, but in other cases where eg a third party  
> reads a communication marked PRIVATE at the end, does the reader  
> have any duty to keep it private?

Another piece of nonsense is the ``if you are not the intended  
recipient''.  If the sender doesn't know, how on earth can the  
recipient?  In the case of ``mis addressed'' email (which I suspect  
the clause is intended to address) of course I'm the intended  
recipient: there's my email address, right in the To: line.

ian