On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 07:17:20PM -0500, Michael Goffioul wrote:
> I'm sorry, but I don't agree. IMO the actual question is: should the poster
> even be allowed to use his/her coporate email to acces public mailing list?
You will be hardly be able to hinder him, will you :)
I didn't mean from the octave point of view, I meant from his/her employer point of view.
> In this particular case, the footer says:
> - if you're not the recipient, you must delete the message; so basically
> everybody should delete it and no-one should answer
I don't know US law; under German law, nobody can force you to delete
the message. Forwarding it however might be a problem, especially if it
is obvious to you that the mail was sent in error and there is some
obvious damage done by forwarding it.
> - you are not allowed to copy or forward the e-mail; so if such e-mail by
> accident contain actual confidential information, because of the presence
> of the footer, could the octave project be held liable for resending the
> email to thousands of people?
Ask a lawyer. Personally, I think that everything done by automatic
means is safe, but willfully forwarding erroneous messages is different.
The point is, no-one on this list would want to take the risk. Using such footer on a public mailing is completely contradictory and I'm in favor of drawing the attention of the sender to this contradiction. There are many ways to get a free non-corporate email address out there on the web, so it IS possible to avoid such footers.
Michael.