|> -----Original Message-----
|> From: Paul Day [mailto:bonfire§bur.st] 
|> Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 2:44 AM
|> To: dns§lists.auda.org.au
|> Subject: Re: [DNS] RE: [PRIVATE] Peter has left the building
|> 
|> 
|> On Sun, 24 Mar 2002, Dassa wrote:
|> > Marking your message as private does not confer any special rights.
|> > Once it hits my mail system it becomes my property to do as I wish
with
|> > it.
|> 
|> Has that ever tested that in court in .au? I'm a far cry from a
lawyer,
|> but I wouldn't be quite too sure if that were the case under the new
|> privacy amendment or under copyright law.

Very little about email has been tested in an Australian court.  I don't
see how the privacy laws would come into it but there is a link to
copyright law.  However, it should be noted the posted private message
was in response to a post made by me and only contained my original
text, the responding comments and my additional ones.  As such I
consider myself fully justified in posting it as I did.  Other private
mail is a different story, and I deal with it on an individual basis.
There is slightly more involved in my saying mail sent to me is mine to
do with as I wish.  I have previously notified some people that a
condition of mailing to me is to give up any copyright on the message.  

I would like to say that I'm not in the habit of posting private
messages to mailing lists but where the private mail deals with a post
to a mailing list and there is no comments within it except in response
to the post, I feel it is only appropriate it is sent back to the list.

It may be interesting to see a few test cases regarding email and
mailing lists.  Australia does seem to be heading down the same
litigation path as the US.  It is going to happen sooner or later.

Darryl (Dassa) Lynch.