X-Message-Number: 16798 From: "Trygve Bauge" <> References: <> Subject: Re: [CryonicsEurope (Yahoo)] Private Email and freedom of speech! Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 03:09:56 +0200 <> wrote: > Just for the record, I have never authorised Trygve Bauge to repost PRIVATE > e-mail that I sent to him and to Elizabeth. I take considerable exception > to this. I like my right to privacy and so when I choose not to post to > Cryonics Europe or to Cryonet, I expect others to obtain permission before > reposting to these public forums. > > I suggest sanction be set against Trygve Bauge if I am right that this > breeches the rules of posting to this list. > > > Chris Benatar > To Chris, don't be angry. When it comes to the Australian case I have received some letters (from Elizabeth) that clearly were marked "not for posting", those I have not posted. I have instead asked and received her prior permission to pass these on to each of those I thereafter have passed these on to. Otherwise I have received and reposted with my comments quite a few letters from many different people, including some from you . These letters had that in common that though they were originally mailed to me, they were neither tagged as copyrighted nor otherwise tagged as confidential. Furthermore I saw nothing in your letter that reflected negatively on you. So please, if you do not want me to quote or comment publicly on a letter you send me, then you have to state that in the specific original letter to me that it applies to. As a matter of fact I thank you for the letter in which case you responded to Simon, and thought it would be of value for a broader audience to read that. My original letter, and his comments were both posted publicly, and I thought a wider audience than he and me ought to see your eloquent response. The letter was returned unposted the first time I tried to post it to the Cryonet, because each line started with a ">". Apparently Cryonet has an automatic function that returns unposted messages where a too large percentage of the lines start with the ">" sign. When I discovered this today, then I reposted your letter without the ">" signs, amd I assume it got posted. As to the other letter where you in a polite and kind manner had adviced Elizabeth. I thought that letter would set a good example for other cryonisists. After all your characteristics of Elizabeth were quite cultivated and balanced, compared to many of the other attacks she and I have come under. And if it had been marked as copyrighted or confidential I would most likely out of politeness have asked your permission, and then only posted it if you had granted the latter. Legally speaking however, one is not bound to keep silent about any information that one has not signed any confidentiality clause in order to receive, or that is not clearly market as copyrighted and it would violate copyright laws to pass on. However I don't recall seeing neither any copyright nor any confidentiality request on those two of your letters that I posted. I have not posted the third letter you sent me, in which you made a more personal evaluation of Elizabeth's mental situation. I have however forwarded it to her, since I do not want to hide anything from her in this case, and since you had not labeled that as confidential or copyrighted either. Maybe I remember wrong but the Extropians seem to have the following policy: When posting to the extropian digest one assumes the entries to be copyrighted and not to be copied outside the list unless otherwise indicated by each poster. I have not seen any similar policy on the Cryonet or on the European cryonics list, nor do I want any such. It is better for each poster to mark his or her letters as copyrighted or confidential when applicable. History knows many examples of people publishing whole books of correspondence that originally was sent privately. After all you sent your letters to me, without first asking me to sign any confidentiality clause, something I never would have signed anyway. It is also the question of whether anything sent over the Internet, without being scrambled and coded (e.g. with a PGP key), in any way can be said to be private. If you send a post card or e-mail that can be read all along the way, it doesn't have the same privacy as any enclosed and sealed envelope, and you shouldn't be too surprised if it gets a wider audience. You probably realize that it is only through publicity that Elizabeth has gotten as far as she has come in this case, if private letters had not been forwarded then I would not have heard about her in the first place, nor would you. Only a few of the cryonics organizations would have known about her, as they are the only one's to know about most of the post mortem requests that routinely are turned down without anyone intervening on their behalf. Thus any attempt at censuring freedom of speech, might be both unwarranted and unconstitutional, and with good reasons. Sincerely, Trygve Bauge Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16798