<<>OK, I'll ask the stupid question. Where did this come from? It appears
to
>be a private Email item between two or three people, at least one of
whom
>seems to be a non-list user; how did it end up on the mailing list? Or
>did I miss some intervening item that moved the discussion from private
>electronic mail to the public forum?
>

It appears to be a case of never say in an email message (private or
otherwise) that which you would not feel proud of if it were published on
a billboard in Times-Square.>>


Is that really how most people view electronic mail? How sad. And how
inconsistent.

I think that most people recognize and respect the privacy of other forms
of one-to-one communication. For example, if the average Jo[e] found an
opened letter from one individual to another, I think that s/he would be
hesitant to publish the contents of that letter. Likewise, overhearing a
private phone call is sometimes unavoidable, but I think that most people
respect that privacy even if they inadvertently violate it. Obviously
there are exceptions to these viewpoints-tabloid-journalism "reporters"
and some political candidates come to mind, and I'm sure there are
others. But I think that most people, especially professionals, would
consider repeating or publishing an obviously-private communication
without the knowledge or permission of the communicating parties to be
unprofessional, unethical, and just plain rude.

A secondary issue is that publishing something that someone else wrote
without his/her permission is illegal. Most people don't think about it,
but an electronic mail item that I create is a "writing", and is
protected by the copyright laws the same as a novel, play, or poem would
be. For that matter, even Usenet newsgroup postings and mailing-list
postings like this are "writings" to which the originator, unless
released or otherwise granted, holds the exclusive right-to-copy (as
excepted by the "fair use" provisions). Obviously this is generally not
much of an issue in practice; since it would be difficult to demonstrate
a "loss" caused by the unauthorized re-distribution of a Usenet posting,
the available damages are pretty small.

Though perhaps not in this case; if one of these Interex people should
lose his/her job over the flap caused by the unauthorized publication of
a private communication/writing, it might very well provide sufficient
basis for recovery. Ouch.

I guess my bottom line is that I was very surprised that someone in our
"family" would be so unprofessional as to publish a private communication
between other parties without their permission, and that's why I asked if
I had missed some part of the discussion that legitimately brought it
into the public forum.

Steve