Randy - please stop sending these to me - you send me one every time I post
to NANOG. If you don't like the signature that's appended to my emails (not
by my choice), and the litigious society we live in, go ahead and block all
email from me.
Replies directly to you to stop sending me these emails have gone
unanswered, which is why I am mentioning this here.
Whilst we're sidetracking...
I took some counsel on this not so long ago to see whether these were just
novelty signatures or if they were real legal stuff. Turns out they could
actually be used legally, interesting I thought.
Howevers its curious that signatures such as this claiming to be confidential
are posted to a list which is very much public and archived in several public
websites.. not sure how right it is to autoappend them to all your mails as well
as the private ones!
Steve
Unilateral NDA's, notices of confidentiality, and the ever famous "by
reading this, you agree to xxxxx", are all a load of bunk.
The ONLY way a notice of confidentiality could ever help you is if you
have an existing, signed, and legally enforcable NDA already in place with
the party who reeives the message. In that case, they can serve as notice
that the communication falls under the these existing terms of
confidentiality. The rest is complete garbage, the equivalent of an AOL
"pass this message along" story for executives.
Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
Howevers its curious that signatures such as this claiming to be confidential are posted to a list which is very much public and archived in several public websites.. not sure how right it is to autoappend them to all your mails as well as the private ones!
There is a current belief (IANAL) that once you publicly post messages with such a disclaimer, the disclaimer will be unenforceable in court thereafter.
I.E. John Doe posts something to public mailing list with the usual legalese disclaimer. I read John's posts, and realize that his disclaimer has no meaning- he has intended for the general public to see his communication and has authorized everyone explicitly. How can John later claim, if I inadvertantly received a misdirected private communication, that I was not authorized, since he has previously given blanket authorization to the public at large to read (some) communications?
This might seem like splitting hairs, but I bet a good lawyer can make a whole case out of it.