🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <SJA.95Jan15112220@lk-hp-16.hut.fi>, sja@snakemail.hut.fi (Sakari Jalovaara) writes:

[Snip...]

|> Yes indeed, it seems email is recognised legally.  One person has
|> faced charges in court for E-mailing death threats to the US president.

[Snip...]

|> Is there some fundamental reason why Net postings wouldn't be as binding
|> as words on paper?  Posts can be forged.  So can paper - steal some
|> company letterhead and print a press release on it.  Same goes for
|> telephone conversations or saying something on TV.
|>
|> If you want to weasel out of it later you'll have to lie fairly
|> convincingly to people who make a living trying to figure out
|> if you are telling the truth.
|> 									++sja

Presidential death threats are illegal no matter what the medium; email
does not lend some aura of legality to extremes which are serious a
priori. Don't you find it interesting that any serious negotiations
with *contractural* obligations may start in email but always proceed
in snailmail? The legal system is just starting to grapple with the
difficulties of electronic communications, encryption, and signature
verification. This thread started with the *legal* decision of Unisys
to defend its LZW patent. They are not defending that position through
email or in the forum of Usenet, because these networks (1) are not
*legally* recognized as a proper channel, and (2) are not *trusted* in
terms of archives and security. That's not to say they can't or won't
or never will be; they just aren't at this stage. Saying presidential
death threats prove the legality of email is like saying bomb jokes at
airport gates are not funny because they're illegal.

						Regards, Weird