Are Email Addresses Public Info?: Blogger, Movie Studio Spar Over E-mail List

[mandy]

A blogger who posted e-mail addresses for movie studio agents, producers, and executives has drawn the ire of Universal Studios, while setting off debates about what constitutes spam and whether e-mail addresses are public.

Gerard Jones, a 63-year-old retiree living in Oregon, explains on his site that he has been trying to get people to read a book he wrote. He said that after years of hard work he created a Web site to help others send their ideas to editors, publishers, and movie studio decision makers...

full article: http://www.techweb.com/article/showArtic...=174900731&pgno=1

[bargainbloodhound]

whether e-mail addresses are public

Umm, it depends on the email address.  If it is an email address that is displayed on a page for purposes of allowing customers to contact a person/company then it is public.  If it is an email address that you acquired through a mailing list, or an email sent to you then it is private.  Case in point, eBay "pink" employees who display their email addresses in their "pink" band on eBay forums can be considered to have public email addresses.  eBay buyers/sellers who post on the same boards have private email addresses.

In the blogger case, the email addresses the person listed would only be "public" if they were also displayed on the agents/producers own web sites as contact addresses.