[Coco] Quoting private email

[Steven Hirsch]

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013, Tormod Volden wrote:

> Well, I also wanted to comment on the topic. Copyright and law aside,
> it is impolite to quote a private e-mail in public. This includes
> posting it to lists, or forwarding to others without the sender's
> consent (unless you know the person and the circumstances so well that
> you can be sure he's OK with it). In my opinion that would also cover
> private e-mails from a business as long it is clear one-to-one message
> exchange and not some boiler-plate newsletter. If we don't protect
> privacy in such situations, it will eventually be difficult to get any
> honest information from any business representative when you need it.

I agree 100%!  And, if I had actually been the person who received a 
private message from the complaining party and had the questionable 
judgement to post it on a message board I would have apologized profusely. 
But I'm not and I didn't.  My involvement was limited to:

- A comment about their very public web site that, while it may have been
   a bit sarcastic, was certainly protected free speech.

- A one line response to the report of an eBay price for one of this
   individual's products.  Also protected free speech about a very public
   bit of information - last I checked.

So, to recap:

- I did not receive any private e-mail

- I did not so much as _quote_ anything from this private e-mail while
   responding to the thread.  Nor did I quote anything from the web site.

- I did not even _comment_ on the e-mail contents posted by a third party,
   nor did I end up reposting them in any of my responses (I trim e-mail
   responses religiously).

Yet, this individual copied me on a note to all participants in the 
original message thread with what any reasonable person would take as 
extremely heavy-handed and rude at a minimum and an outright threat at the 
maximum.

I was not amused.  Particularly not after reviewing the thread (which he 
kindly provided a link to) to re-check the facts of the situation.
I'm sorry, but I don't like being bullied and won't suffer it quietly.

Steve


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