Is this allowed?

[deano6410]

If someone sends me a spam e-mail and i remove the e-mail addy and links and post it on a forum, is this legal? my impression is if someone spams you then you can pretty much do what you want with it, what should i look out for?

[hunderdown]

I suppose, in theory, the spammer could come after you for violating their copyright. But how likely is that?

And even if they did, it seems unlikely that they will have registered the email at the Copyright Office, meaning that the most they could force you to do is take down the message....

[deano6410]

Does this apply to anyone?

e.g if a mate sends me an e-mail and he doesnt mention that it is private and he doesnt register it at that copyright place.

Does this mean i can edit out his name and personal details and then publish the content of the e-mail?

[hunderdown]

No, it doesn't apply to everyone, and actually, ALL emails are just like letters and essays and articles and novels and whatever--they are protected to some degree by copyright law even if they aren't registered.

A spammer just isn't likely to come after you.

Publishing private emails has a couple of other problems--you're violating someone's privacy, which might (I don't know for sure) be against the law in some places. And you're possibly annoying your friend, which seems to me to be the most important thing.

But from your message I'm guessing that you are from the UK, not the US, so you should check and see if the rules are different. If anything, they are probably more stringent.

As a general rule, I wouldn't publish people's emails without permission.