[ILUG] Mail Footers...

[Dave Wilson]

>  If you write a news paper article, saying "John Looney killed his
> mother", and then at the end, in plain sight put "Anything I say is
> rubbish", you can still be sued for slander.

However, if I write this article and at the end, in plain sight put
"Anything I say is my opinion and not that of this newspaper or my
employer", that leaves the reader, and presumably the courts, in less
doubt as to who's doing the slandering. I think that this is the
intended effect.

The unfortunate fact is that a mail coming from a @company.com address
can possibly be interpreted as representing the company. Now even if
a lawsuit is frivilous, noone wants to have to pay the cost of defending
it. So you either have to trust *all* your employees (which itself has
a real cost when the headcount is high enough), nuke email access -
or make it clear who's opinion is being represented.

I think it's ugly as hell but, unfortunately, there is a justification.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this message is not legal advice
(ironic, isn't it?)

By the way, I may have to take back my earlier comment about it
breaking RFCs. Not allowing full control over the body of a message
is definitely broken behaviour, but I don't think it violates any
internet protocol standards as such; it just limits the kind of
services your users have access to (and leaves it to the maintainers
of those services to pick up the pieces).

Regards,
Dave

-- 
 dave.wilson at heanet.ie --------------------------------------- +353-1-662-3412
 It is one thing to pray; it is another to pray to entities who might not only
 be listening, but who will search you out on the road and beat you across the
 head with sticks if you say something that offends them.       -- Neil Gaiman
 ------------------ For crypto key send a blank message to davew+pgp at heanet.ie