On Wednesday 02 of March 2011, Patrick Ben Koetter wrote: > > >> From a legal perspective I will point out that any e-mail you > > >> > > >>receive is (at least in the US, but most other countries too) > > >>considered copyrighted by the sender. Under copyright law the > > >>sender has the right to control expiration of content they create, > German law will not work in this case for the same reason it won't for > email disclaimers too. The rationale is that "one-sided agreements rescind > a contract", which is the case if a sender declares e.g. a copyright on a > message or wants "to control expiration of content they create".
Furthermore, let's not forget that while maybe in US every possible imaginable thing can be covered by copyright law, in sane countries copyright only applies to "works". Work has to be creative. If I just send you an email saying "pay me back my $200 you stupid bastard", it doesn't make it a copyrighted work. Furthermore, many copyright laws have "permitted use" (sorry, don't know the right english term for it) instead of fair use which explicitly says what can be done with a work after its first publishing. And this use cannot be limited by any contract, so even if the viewpoint of copyright was valid in US (I won't debate on this since I'm not an expert on US copyright law) it's definitely invalid with many other law systems. -- \------------------------/ | k...@epsilon.eu.org | | http://epsilon.eu.org/ | /------------------------\
