Hi,Tamar,
PMFJI...
FWIW, in US law, the writer of a letter owns the copyright to that letter. Don't know how that translates to email, though. Copyrights don't exist on their own. They're subject to fair use.
The question is whether copyright law actually applies. Copyright laws typically involve safeguarding of intellectual property rights where there is a commercial interest. Everyone in the word infringes copyrights. For example, whenever you copy and paste a portion of someone's post, or quote someone's e-mail or forward it, technically you are infringing that copyright.
They key distiction, however, is whether the copyright translates into an enforceable right. At some point, practicality has to set in. Imagine a world where before you could use any portion of text that a person wrote, in the course of everyday human relations, you would have to procure a license. That would be absurd.
Also, there is an entire body of law that relates to privacy. In this case, what UT management referred to concerns issues of privacy/confidentiality, as opposed to intellectual property rights. A good example is confidential communications recognized by the law (e.g. attorney/client privilege). As long as those communications are kept truly confidential, then there is a reasonable expectation of privacy that
must be respected, and would not be admissable as evidence in a court of law. There are some exceptions, but they don't apply here.
Even in these cases, however, when those communications fall into the hands of third parties, that expectation of privacy no longer exists. In this case, there is no judicially recognized right of confidentiality. Rather, there is a strong desire on the part of an individual to not have these matters made public.
As Rod aptly put it, if one doesn't want something coming back and when there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, don't put it in writing where 3rd parties could potentially see it. If it's truly confidential, then reasonably prudent people will take the necessary measures to safeguard those communications.
Kevin
