Are personal messages protected by copyright?
There's a cool thread going
now regarding the above-captioned.
I got bitten by a similar issue here on E2. Now, I wasn't in any copyright
violation, but it was the expectation of privacy that I was accused of
violating.
I received a message via our /msg system that I thought was abusive. I then
published that message in a daylog. I got fired as a CE. The
reason cited was that the sender of the abusive /msg to me, although he did not
request it in his /msg, expected that the contents of that message were
confidential and only between us. My assumption was that if someone sends me
something, particularly something I find inflammatory, it's mine to broadcast to
the world, along with something from me saying "did y'all see what he/she
said to me?!!"
You see, the /msg was from my then-boss at E2. The current
person in charge supported my removal as an editor and failed to reinstate me
after the hierarchy changed (he did, kindly, entertain a review of the decision
to remove me). Now, for fear of committing the same kind of violation, I can't
tell you what was in the /msg giving me the rationale for keeping me out of the
editorial staff here.
/rant off.