I just received one of those e-mails in which the signature is longer than the actual message (by quite a bit). The signature in question included the following line:
If you are not the intended recipient, you
are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution, or
use of the information contained herein (including any reliance
thereon) is STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
These signatures are a pet peeve of mine. While the sender may hope that a couple of words in all caps will scare people into submission, there’s very little in the way of legal action which could be taken in the event I were to do any or all of those things. Quite simply, by sharing their wisdom with me outside of some contractual limitation on my behavior as the recipient (such as a confidentiality agreement between me and the sender) they ceded a significant meassure of control over the distribution of that wisdom. Absent any other restriction, the only real limitation on distribution would be copyright law, which may or may not help depending on the nature of the use. To my way of thinking, they’d be better off politely asking the recipient not to do those things and hope for the best. In my case, the mere attempt to “prohibit” makes me want to distribute the e-mail (or at least write a blog entry berating them for having a silly signature).
Of course, in this particular instance there’s another problem. Even if this were enforceable as written, I could, as a presumably “intended” recipient, apparently broadcast the e-mail to the world without arousing the ire of JP Morgan Chase (oops!) or its legal team. Fortunately for them, it’s not really interesting enough to share.
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