Hey I said last night Kestas could use my.posts, but I still think we need a ToS that forbids it without express permission. But if Philcore is going to encourage Kestas to commit a civil offense and Kestas does it, I will pursue it because I have shown that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy according to the law with actual case law backing it up. Any communication from one person to another that cannot be viewed by the general public and is intended for the recipient only carries a legal expectation of privacy. Making it completely public as Philcore suggests be done would allow me to bankrupt Philcore and I would love to do that. I don't want to hurt the site so I would accept a very small settlement of say $5 from Kestas but would pursue Philcore to the tune of several million.

Kestas made the mistake of coming on to the forum asking for peoples views on the matter. If you want to keep things simple you present the evidence and give people 2 options, yes and no. Are they supportive or non-supportive.
Do you agree to use of the data:
Yes: 1
No: 0
I've voted, anyone else?

According to the Digital Media Law Project:

"Publishing the Contents of Private Letters and E-Mail (including letters from lawyers threatening legal action): Fair use may protect the publication of the content of private letters and email, including communications from lawyers threatening legal action. As mentioned above, unpublished materials sometimes enjoy greater protection than published documents. Although an author may argue that the "unpublished" nature of his or her correspondence warrants a finding against fair use, such an argument carries weight only when the use involves a heretofore secret work “on its way” to publication, which is never the case for lawyers' cease-and-desist letters. Recently, two students at Swarthmore college posted an archive of internal emails among Diebold employees; an online newspaper linked to the archive in an article critical of Diebold’s voting machines. A court held that although the emails were not published, publishing them was nonetheless protected by fair use. Diebold, 337 F. Supp. 2 at 1203. The court found that the important fourth fair use factor weighed in favor of fair use because Diebold had no intention of selling the archive for profit and therefore it lost no value when the archive was published online. "

A few considerations: first, the value of the communications in question. Assuming we can equate "email" with "private message in a Diplomacy game," there is no value in the communication nor are any of us (nor Kestas, for that matter) attempting to profit from said private messages. Second, educational fair use is generally far more lenient than industry fair use. Students and teachers can do a lot more with copyrighted works than can an individual looking to profit from those works.

Also, we should remember that this site is the private property of Kestas. Since we are users of this site, technically his guests, and we did not sign a TOS, anything we say on this site is really the property of the site's owner.

Source: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/fair-use

From United States v. Maxwell, 42 M.J. 568 (C.M.A. 1995):

"E-mail transmissions are not unlike other forms of modern communication. We can draw parallels from these other mediums. For example, if a sender of first-class mail seals an envelope and addresses it to another person, the sender can reasonably expect the contents to remain private and free from the eyes of the police absent a search warrant founded upon probable cause. However, once the letter is received and opened, the destiny of the letter then lies in the control of the recipient of the letter, not the sender, absent some legal privilege."

"Drawing from these parallels, we can say that the transmitter of an e-mail message enjoys a reasonable expectation that police officials will not intercept the transmission without probable cause and a search warrant. However, once the transmissions are received by another person, the transmitter no longer controls its destiny. In a sense, e-mail is like a letter. It is sent and lies sealed in the computer until the recipient opens his or her computer and retrieves the transmission. The sender enjoys a reasonable expectation that the initial transmission will not be intercepted by the police."

So even the courts can't agree. In one case, wikileaks founder is violating privacy laws amongst others, for publishing internal emails that it was not a recipient of. And I would ask how those students in the Diebold machine case *got* the emails. Were they the recipients of said emails? If so, the circumstances are different. Did they get them from the recipients willingly? If so, the circumstances are different. Or did they hack in to get them? If so, they may face other charges yet as hacking an email system is a criminal offense, not just a civil one.

Why is any case involving email even remotely relevant to this site?

Also case law has changed in the last 18 years. The courts are starting to catch up and the the DMCA is in effect now.

My interpretation of "privacy" on this site is that we only have a reasonable expectation of privacy during the game. We expect that our private messages will only go to the intended recipient. That recipient has every right to then take that message and duplicate it, twist it, and/or repost it as he sees fit, regardless of the original sender's intentions. We can reasonably expect that no other average user of this site has the ability to see our private messages in a game setting. Realistically, these in-game private messages are just that - "in-game", and only "private" in the sense that no other player can intercept and read a message intended for another player.

abge, I'm using email as a proxy for a private in-game message.

But then why not open up the messages to the entire site when the game ends? Any reasonable person would say "oh, they are still private or I could read them now that Tue game is over". Likewise the argument has been made in the past and upheld that the private messages in game should not be revealed because it would give away the way a player plays and affect his future games. Thia fact alone means there is a reasonable expectation of privacy thay continues beyond the games.

Juat to be clear, Kestas can do this for the study. I am actually fine with it. This is now a discussion about where the expectation of privacy exists and the idea that this is a private site despite thousands of dollars in donations in the last several years such that Kestas has no out of pocket for this site anymore.

In light of Draugnar's comment ...

Kestas, feel free to spend my past and any future donations I send on beer.

Yeah, but email is a very specific set of protocols. It really has no bearing on this discussion at all.

If you think of a donation as a thank you for past service rather than a down payment on future service, then you will never be disappointed.

You can say the same thing about a wedding ring.

Again, just an.intellectual discussion. And I view all my donations as being a tahnk you for the past and a commitment on my part to see to the future continuation of the site even if Kestas should ever decide he is tired of running it.

@abgemacht - Email is a different set of transmission protocols, but it is also a different set of protocols from the snail mail and from telegraph/telegram but the courts don't consider the means, just the intent and expectations.

@DA9er - If you think a wedding bamd is a thank you for the past, then you don't grasp the meaning behind the words of the wedding vow.

I'll donate 102 paperclips for every time Draug says he'll donate $100 for something that only he wants.

I'll donate $100 if bosox is told to donate 100,000,000 paperclips or be banned.

Of course he has to make the donation or be banned or it doesn't count.

I'll donate $100 if you take away Draug's badge on April 1 next year for the day and watch him cry like a little bitch.

I will donate 100 if you take away bo's badge forever. After all it was my donation got him the badge.

What? That makes no sense.

Oh and go ahead and take it away next April 1st. I will even.put on a show just for Bo so he will have to donate the $100.

Jimgov, Draugnar is *not* the only one. MadMarx says that in general he wouldn't like it, but in this case (due perhaps to his respect for Kestas), he would have no objection. I pointed out that to have one's messages given to someone for research *after the fact* when we did in fact reasonably expect most of our messages to remain private, would be a violation of trust if there are objections. I object in principle unless anonymity is guaranteed both by username and users it refers to. This would require the grad student to go through and assign code names to other users who are mentioned. It's a lot of trouble.

@draug: " Philcore, you have an attorney as a close friemd of the family and half a million in the stockmarket?"

See how easy it is to get personal information out of you? Any implication that you are less than you claim to be, and the info just starts flowing. Watch, ill do it again ...

I don't believe you have anywhere near that amount in the market. Post your stock account Id and password so we will know you aren't full of shit.

And what's this about a "friend of the family" that is a lawyer? You sound like a teenage kid who's parents know a lawyer and your trying to be a bigshot to your friends. Do you refer to all of your friends that way? Or just the casual acquaintances who you think make you sound important by association?

However, if it were known in advance, say from now on, that the site's policy is to make comments available for research after a decent grace period and time to publicize the policy, I would have no objection to that.

@draug: " Making it completely public as Philcore suggests be done would allow me to bankrupt Philcore and I would love to do that. I don't want to hurt the site so I would accept a very small settlement of say $5 from Kestas but would pursue Philcore to the tune of several million."

Ok, just so I dont fall for it again ... Is this you getting a laugh at your trolling attempts, or is this another pathetic attempt at intimidation?

Haven't you figured out by now, that no one take you seriously enough for you to be intimidating, and the constant attempts just make you look ridiculous?

You want so bad to seem important and to be able to make people fear and respect your imaginary power. I've said it before, its a sign of massive insecurity, and you should seek help for that. Do you have a friend of the family who is a psychologist?

Are you guys trying to get Kestas to move the donation status to the profile?

On another note, actual threats to other members need to stop, joking or not. Draugar, you will not be suing any other member of this site. Consider it my interpretation of rule 9.