EmailDiscussions.com  

Go Back   EmailDiscussions.com > Email Service Provider-specific Forums > FastMail Forum
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read
Stay in touch wirelessly

FastMail Forum All posts relating to FastMail.FM should go here: suggestions, comments, requests for help, complaints, technical issues etc.

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 17 Dec 2010, 04:10 PM   #1
janusz
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
Posts: 4,933
Silly clause in FM's T&C

Inspired (provoked??) by a question about another email provider's terms and conditions, posted elsewhere in EMD....

In section 4 of T&C Fastmail forbids to
Quote:
[h]arvest or otherwise collect information about others, including email addresses, without their consent.
Never mind harvesting, let's concentrate on 'otherwise collect'.
So if somebody puts on the Web (or in print) his/her email address, phone number, CV, age, place of residence etc., the law-abiding FM user is obliged to avert his eyes and do not even try to send email to folks who freely publish information about themselves?

As a matter of fact I've been recently spending a fair share of my time collecting information about folks who may have witnessed, or taken part in, some events during WWII. And I did contact some of them by email from my FM account. Should I expect the full wrath of Opera unleashed on me?

Last edited by janusz : 17 Dec 2010 at 04:17 PM.
janusz is offline   Reply With Quote

Old 17 Dec 2010, 06:47 PM   #2
sflorack
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 2,937
Quote:
Originally Posted by janusz View Post
So if somebody puts on the Web (or in print) his/her email address, phone number, CV, age, place of residence etc., the law-abiding FM user is obliged to avert his eyes and do not even try to send email to folks who freely publish information about themselves?
One would assume that posting personal information in a public place is providing consent.
sflorack is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17 Dec 2010, 08:20 PM   #3
Terry
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: VK4
Posts: 2,995
I would have thought Fastmail were referring to a spam type situation....
Terry is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17 Dec 2010, 09:04 PM   #4
janusz
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
Posts: 4,933
That's your understanding (and mine, FWIW), but that's not what the text says when interpreted in the strict sense.
janusz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17 Dec 2010, 09:22 PM   #5
kirill
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Posts: 879
What you quoted was just an example for this condition on lawful usage:

Quote:
You agree to abide by all applicable local, state, national and international laws and regulations and are solely responsible for all acts or omissions that occur under your account or password, including the content of your transmissions through the Service, or any content you upload or publish through the Service. By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to:

bla bla bla
kirill is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18 Dec 2010, 12:12 AM   #6
communicant
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 879
janusz's point at the start of this thread is well taken in a general way (and I presume that he had his tongue at least partly in his cheek), but where careless or squishy and illogical language is concerned, one can often figure out what the perpetrator *meant* to say -- in the case that Janusz cites, for example, one can infer the implied presence after "collect" of some qualifying or modifying phrase like "collect in bulk" or "randomly collect" or "collect with the intent to send unsolicited commercial solicitations" or some such. (That is probably what whoever wrote FM's terms thought he was implying by the verb "harvest.") The problem is that TOS and T&C statements present themselves as formal legal documents, however badly they are often drafted, and by clicking "I have read and I accept," one really is taking on a technically binding contractual obligation, however farfetched its enforcement might be. In any case, mushy language serves neither party to the agreement, because it is often either literally impossible to discern what one is being asked to agree to, or not feasible to live up to any undertaking to do so.

Taken to its absurd but logical conclusion, in FM's case, agreeing not to "[h]arvest or otherwise collect information about others, including email addresses, without their consent" would even preclude adding an address to an account's address book, since that would be "collecting" an address without the express consent of its owner. Sure, one could make a case that having received an email containing the sender's address constituted "consent" to "collect" the address, but strictly speaking that would depend on the context. Suppose, say, that one sent an email to a person or a business entity warning them that one definitely did *not* want to hear from them. Could they then claim that the mere fact of having received that message constituted legal permission to do the very thing which the message was intended to prevent? Such fanciful hypotheticals quickly become recursive and nightmarish, but it is precisely to prevent such problems that legal language was devised. Legalese is linguistically turgid and aesthetically hideous, but it is meant to perform a specific task. Alas, like everything else in the modern world, it is beginning to weaken and show signs of decline. Shoddy thinking is more tolerated than ever before in all areas of human endeavor, so naturally one encounters more and more of it.

In broader terms, I think the problem arises in large part because schools no longer teach students to write or to think, still less to write or think clearly, and almost never both at once. As technology grows ever more astounding in its capabilities, hardware and software are designed by narrow geniuses who can write code but not words, and the "wetware" which is the necessary and unavoidable interface with their creations remains subject to all the imperfections that flesh was always heir to, an inherent deficiency now compounded by inefficient or incompetent education and overcompartmentalized acquisition and deployment of knowledge.

Climbing off the soapbox now.
communicant is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18 Dec 2010, 08:53 AM   #7
hadaso
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Holon, Israel.
Posts: 4,801
I think that people posting their contact address on the web can be interpreted as agreeing to receive email communication from individuals but not as consent to turning their mailbox into a bulletin board (that is: free advertising space).

Last edited by hadaso : 23 Dec 2010 at 05:47 AM. Reason: Fixed several typos.
hadaso is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22 Dec 2010, 11:16 AM   #8
ChinaLamb
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: a virtually impossible but finitely improbable position
Posts: 2,320
Quote:
Originally Posted by hadaso View Post
I think that people posting their contact address on the web can be interpreted as agreeing to receive email communication from individuals bt not as consent to turning theur mailbox into a bulletin board (thta is: free advertising space..
Of all the things to be upset about... This??!!!?

Only someone that has bad motives would be upset about this.
ChinaLamb is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT +9. The time now is 05:53 PM.

 

Copyright EmailDiscussions.com 1998-2022. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy