Ben Parker wrote:
> Both of the above acts and various other laws, securities regulations, etc.
> can have a serious impact on what kinds of information may/may not be exchnged
> between business and/or government entities and/or "customers" and the
> interested public by any/all means of communication, including email list
> messages, public or private.
> All I was trying to point out is that there are many users of LISTSERV who use
> LISTSERV in environments where the "stone tablet" model of never,ever editing
> list message archives simply does not and can not apply.  When such users come
> to this list to ask the question of how to do it, I suggest that we should not
> begin by lecturing them on the fine philosophical points of why they should
> not even think about doing this.  LISTSERV may have begun in Academia and
> still serves that market (with all its traditions) well, but it is now also
> very widely used in government, military, business, and religious
> institutional environments where the rules and traditions are very different.

Thank you for the info, and lecture duly noted, Ben.

As to SOX/SarbOx, I've nothing to say.  As to HIPPA, and I think there was
follow-up legislation under the current regime, I along with many others,
don't see it as a privacy protection act, but more as a "give big business
(insurance companies) what it wants: no privacy for the individual if it
hinders big business" act.  But that is politics.

I will observe, though, that it seems to me that common sense, and decency,
ought to prevail as to transmission of private information about an
individual.  However, since some list subscribers often do not think before
posting to the list, it might be well for lists where there is a high
potential of thoughtless transmission of proscribed information to be set
so that everything must be approved by a single editor.

While I approve of list archives, and the listowner's ability to edit them,
I also think it is far better for the item which may need to be edited out
never to have been distributed in the first place.

Oh, since the matter of laws and lists has come up, here is something which
I meant to mention a couple of weeks ago, in relation to the
"Keeping email addr's out of archives" thread.

Pete Weiss wrote:
> Searching the web for shadow archives i.e., users who have gatewayed list
> postings to the web.
  (Aside, just how do *you* do that, Pete?)

Keep in mind that some U.S. states mandate that all email sent/received
by govt. employees be archived.  This may apply to all city/county/state
employees, the archives available to the public under the state's "open
record" act(s).  How difficult it may be for the public to gain access to
these records probably varies.  Are they open to a Google search?  I don't
know, but I'm sure they could be utilized, under whatever "open record
act", by an enterprising soul looking for fresh, "live" email addresses.
And there is not a blessed thing the listowner can do about it, other than
ban subscriptions from states with such laws.  I don't like my private
lists being made public in this manner, but I'm also not inclined to ban
all subscriptions from govt. agencies in, say, Florida.

Douglas Winship   [log in to unmask]