A brief rant, if you will accomodate me for a moment:
I encountered a disclaimer in an e-mail that strikes me as extreme enough to mention:
This email, and any attachment, is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, copying, dissemination or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited.
This came as part of a response from a company I had asked about the availability of an item. Note that, by a strict interpretation of the statement, only the specific recipient of the message can use the information contained within. If the e-mail had been from the company’s legal department, or if it hadn’t been about a product with a great deal of publicity and interest, there might have been some justification.
I know that legal boilerplate such as this seems to go along with incorporation, and that many of the employees of this company must stifle a groan every time they send information on their products, but these statements can be worded in such a way that they don’t throw a giant blanket of silence over simple sale information. Or, perhaps, the statement can be reserved for those departments that handle legal, fiscal, and personnel matters, and a “lighter” disclaimer be used for general public communication.
This is something that falls into the same general category as Copyfraud, in that it attempts to place a much stronger restriction on something that doesn’t legally deserve it.
Or am I supposed to take the information about whether a particular item is available for sale to the grave?
My own disclaimer: I changed the language of the disclaimer a tad, even though a quick internet search revealed several companies using the same wording as the e-mail.
