[way off-topic] legal disclaimers [Was: Re: Using Red hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at home]

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Lelegard Thierry wrote:
> This message and any attachments (the "message") is intended solely for the
> addressees and is confidential. If you receive this message in error, please
> delete it and immediately notify the sender.
> Any use not in accordance with its purpose, any dissemination or disclosure,
> either whole or partial, is prohibited except formal approval.
> The E-Mail transmission can not guarantee the integrity of this message.
> NAGRA FRANCE will not therefore be liable for the message if modified.

Just out of curiosity.  Has anybody managed to sue anybody based on 
these disclaimers and actually *won*?

The way I look at them:

1) If I got the message, I am intended recipient.  I have no telepatic 
skills, and I can't tell what was going in sender's head and who he 
intended to receive the message.  I could have been in Bcc, I could have 
been part of an alias somewhere that sender knew about, or it could have 
came from mailing list that sender knew I'm subscribed to (and those are 
just some of the possibilities).

2) If I see the message, and there is no non-disclosure agreement that I 
actually signed, I can do with the information what I please.  That is 
way one needs to sign them before being allow access to information.

3) If somebody who did signed non-disclosure agreement forwarded it to 
me, but I haven't signed non-disclosure neither with original sender or 
forwarder, I can again do with it whatever I want.  The original sender 
can sue the forwarder for braking non-disclosure, but he can't do 
anything to me.  The original sender can sue forwarder even if the email 
does not contain the above disclaimer (since there is written *and* 
signed legal document).

4) Lastly, even if I get sued, I can always argue the information was 
passed to me intentionally by the sender, in order to attempt to prevent 
me to use information that I would found out on my own anyhow.  And 
there's no way for suer to prove otherwise.  Would make suer look very 
childish infront of the court (and public, and stock holders).

So (based on 1, 2, 3, and 4), my question is.  Are those legal 
disclaimers just evil way for legal guys to get even on us system admins 
by vasting disk space and network bandwith?  And of course, forcing us 
to have non-cool signatures.

BTW, to get back onto technical side, has anybody though of writing 
plugin for mailing list servers to automatically strip signatures that 
look as legal disclaimers?  Would be cool ;-)

P.S.
Starting as a new thread, to avoid poluting original thread with this 
totaly unrelated junk.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7