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Don Brash is currently weathering the storm resulting from a "leaked" email that was given to Winston Peters, and the board of TVNZ copped an earful from the government after an email painting part of the government in unflattering terms also came to light.

So why are people archiving all this damning material?

Do you keep all your old emails?

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Are you aware of the email archiving policies active in your workplace?

Is your employer secretly (or openly) archiving copies of every message that pass through their mailserver?

If you don't know, you really ought to ask -- it might just make you a little more cautious about what you say using this medium.

In the case of a leaked email, what are the original sender and recipient's rights under privacy laws?

Well last time I checked (and I doubt anything's changed), NZ's privacy laws are really little more than a sop. If someone discloses information that you deem to be private there is little sanction in law and the process of invoking our privacy laws is tedious and uncertain.

So what about theft?

If someone steals a copy of an email sent to or by you, is this the same as when someone steals your car or your new flat-screen TV?

I suspect not -- since this is really an intellectual property crime not an actual theft. After all, you still have the original email, they've just taken a copy.

[sound of trumpets] Enter the Music Industry...

RIANZ and APRA would tell us that copying *is* theft and there are laws in place to punish those who copy without the permission of the copyright owner -- so is Winston Peters in breach of the NZ's Copyright Laws when he released that email?

Well hell, I think he is!

By giving that email (which is a creative work for which he does not hold the copyright) to the media, he has effectively republished without permission.

Let's see whether anyone takes action to sue him for breach of copyright -- wouldn't that be interesting?

Of course I'm not a lawyer (thank God), however I'm sure there's more than one or two legal-eagles reading this column so I challenge them to offer us an informal opinion as to our rights in respect to the emails we write and receive.

Can they be archived by a third party without our expressed (rather than implied) permission?

If someone copies and publishes that email without our permission, are they breaking the law? Can we sue? Would we get any damages?

I think you'll agree -- these are interesting questions worthy of an answer.

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