I know Marc said no more, but I just had to!
;)
Thor have you copyrighted you below disclaimer? If not you should...I am
going to steal it.
No problem. Let's see, at my $300 per hour legal rate, that's about 5 bucks
you owe me ;)
Although we all might feel the disclaimers are silly there are some portions
or parts of the disclaimers that hold value (e.g.:
Privacy Notice: This e-mail comes from a Monitored E-mail system; users
have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy. Any or all E-mails and
all files sent through this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded,
copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized site, and law
enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies.
By using this e-mail system, the user consents to such interception,
monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the
discretion of authorized site personnel.
Maybe as a logon banner-- there actually is some value in requiring a user
to accept the agreement in order to proceed. I have something similar on my
corp. But there is a big difference- a disclaimer saying "by using this
system the user consents" can't really have any value if it is added *after*
the user uses it. I mean, you have to use it in the first place in order to
find out what the terms of use are. As a user of a system like that, I
could send out a million emails and never know that the tag was being added.
Employer Liability: Our Company accepts no liability for the information
contained in this e-mail or for the consequences of any action taken based
on the information provided, unless that information is subsequently
confirmed in writing. The information contained herein does not necessarily
express the opinion or position of the Company and cannot be attributed to
or made binding upon the Company.
This is the part that made me reply-- it was a LOL moment for me (not
picking on you, btw, just your legal dept ;) That entire paragraph is
fubar-- first, to say "unless the information is subsequently confirmed in
writing." It's *already* in writing! If you send that out, and reply to
any reply, then you've confirmed it in writing! LOL. The best part is
where the last line disclaims the value of the disclaimer itself- "The
information contained within" INCLUDES THE DISCLAIMERS, which they say can't
be bound to the Company. ROTFL!!
And for those of you that have been to court, you have seen some of the
silly things that have been successfully litigated. I have on many occasions
left a courtroom with the "are you kidding me" look on my face. At any rate,
if it makes the attorneys in the legal department happy, let them use all
the disclaimers they want.
Yes, I have to agree. But even Judge Kermit V. Lipez wouldn't be able to
justify upholding a legal disclaimer and term of use that is, by it's very
design, added *after* the use action has taken place, particularly when the
language of said disclaimer ends up disclaiming itself. But, I have to hand
it to your legal dept-- only legal savants could craft such a
self-obviating, cyclically redundant, logically anachronistic disclaimer --
one that would require hiring another attorney in order to fully
misunderstand it! :-p
T
(OK Marc, I'm done now )
VEGAS BABY! Hope to see some of you geeks at Blackhat.
t
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