Against legal disclaimers in email

[ redirected for a wider audience ]

Lew <lew@nospam.lewscanon.com> writes:
> John Summerfield wrote:
>> Penchalaiah P. wrote:
>>> Information transmitted by this e-mail is proprietary to Infinite
>>> Computer Solutions
>>
>> It may be proprietary, but it shore ain't confidential!

> Placing "confidential" on every document without regard for its
> content, especially when some of it's publicly disseminated, can
> remove the protection of confidentiality at law from all such marked
> documents in many jurisdictions, including the U.S.  There must be
> discrimination applied in the marking of information as
> "confidential".

> Quite aside from the foolishness you pointed out of marking something
> "confidential" then placing it into the public eye in an archived
> forum where it will be visible by everybody forever.

> Now we can publish everything ever written at or by Infinite Computer
> Solutions without fear of liability.

Wow, that is a great argument that I've not seen before.  The only
way we'll ever make a dent in the plague of legalistic disclaimers
auto-attached to email is if we can convince corporate lawyers that
there is a downside *to them* of insisting on the damned things.
This is the first argument I've seen that there might actually be
a serious legal downside to the practice.

Can you cite chapter and verse to back up this position?  It'd be
great to have a well-reasoned FAQ document that people could just
automatically send to anyone exhibiting this folly ...

            regards, tom lane