OT: boilerplate insanity (was Re: linux lock.info / showlock)

[Fairlight]

Yo, homey, in case you don' be listenin', J. P. Radley done said:
> 
> Uh, can we drop the baloney, please?

I -love- it when they say it's intended soley for the individual to whom it
is addressed.  If it got to my mailbox, it was addressed to me.  Duh.  If
it got to me via a mailing list, it was addressed to me as part of a
collective entity.  Also duh.  And people -pay- these lawyers, you say?
For advice like that, they may as well forego it and just send the lawyers
fees directly to someone in more need--like me.  :)

What's -really- amusing is that any lawyer worth his initial consultation
should know that no contract can be binding without prior notice, let
alone consent--of which there is none in the case of unsolicited email,
be it commercial or non-commercial.  You don't know it's going to arrive,
and hence cannot agree or disagree to any (unforeseen) terms.  Without a
binding contract, you're not obligated to do or not do a damned thing as
long as you don't actually violate the law.  It truly astounds me that
companies retain people that actually don't "get it" when applying contract
law to email.

If this was actually upholdable, I could just tack a line into my sigfile
that says that if you received the mail, you're obligated to send $1k to
my PayPal account, and I could just retire and live off my usual email
traffic.  Obviously that would get laughed out of court.  They're not
doing anything different in these cases; the actual terms don't matter,
as it's a total lack of meeting of the minds, foreknowledge, and consent.
The -only- part of that which I can see is "binding" would be if ITAR was
actually violated, or death threats made, or something similar--in which
case, it's already a federal felony and has -nothing at all- to do with any
boilerplate agreement; it'd be part of US statutes.

But I digress, just cos I like bitching about boilerplate "logic"...

I doubt Doug has little choice in the matter, however, if he's using his
official email address at the company.  He's a good guy, and just isn't
that way--corporations are just stupid like that.  Wonder if Borisch lets
one use GMail or the like, though...  One way around that.

mark->
-- 
"I'm not subtle. I'm not pretty, and I'll piss off a lot of people along
the way. But I'll get the job done" --Captain Matthew Gideon, "Crusade"