Deconstructing The Email Disclaimer

from the let's-take-this-apart dept

We've all seen them (if we don't have them at the bottom of all of our corporate email signatures): the ridiculously huge email "disclaimers" that many companies require their employees to tack onto the end of each and every email they send out. This process could easily be carried out on any such disclaimer, but someone over at Slate decided to pick on Time Warner and send a lawyer through the disclaimer, making notes along the way, pointing out (as you probably already knew) that such a disclaimer holds little, if any, legal weight, in part because it always seems to appear at the bottom of the email when it's really too late to agree to it before actually reading the email in question.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    intimidation

    identicon
    aNonMooseCowherd, Jun 2nd, 2004 @ 8:22am

    Obviously the main purpose of these notices is to intimidate the recipients and scare them away from doing anything that might embarrass the company.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 2nd, 2004 @ 11:24am

    Fear is enough. Most folks, myself included, are more afraid of the COST of defending ourselves, not whether we're found innocent or guilty.

    Law suits or the threat of them are very intimidating to the average citizen.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Load of bunk

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 2nd, 2004 @ 2:51pm


    Yeah, I just love all that legal mumbo-jumbo. If you sent me the email and you were dumb enough to send it to the wrong recipient, thats not my problem, that's yours.

    Faxes used to always have that crap too stating something to the effect that I was REQUIRED to inform them of THEIR error & destroy the fax in question.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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