I would like to add something similar to what I said about data security in my last article. Take, for example, the totally harmless letter?
Language is a requirement for complex communication between intelligent beings. Along with language, we got the written word. Writing made it possible to compose letters. For many centuries, letters were the epitome of bi-lateral distributed communication.
But who does still write letters today? Is there anybody among us left who actually experienced the wonderful secret of writing and receiving letters? Personally, I still have some vague memories from the first two decades of my life:
If you want to write a letter, you will need paper. You will use the paper to write – in former times often with ink – very diligently and with the best handwriting you are capable of. As a general rule, you will choose the way you address the recipient in a very special and polite way. The text will then cover one or more pages, all numbered. This work of art will be completed by a final address, as well as the place and date, before you sign it. In earlier times, it was even sealed.
Then you take an envelope, fold the paper and put it into the envelope. You glue it shut, write the address of the recipient on the front and your own name and address on the back. It had to be like this, because there was a postal rule – one which in my opinion made a lot of sense. Very long ago, letters that had no address of the sender on the back were not processed. In the age of spam, this, too, sounds rather reasonable, doesn’t it?
After this, you have to put one or several stamps onto the letter – often using your tongue. It is very important to put the correct amount of stamps on the letter, otherwise it will be returned after a few days.
Eventually, you drop your letter in one of the public letter boxes. In former times, they were yellow and had a picture of a horn. The slid on this yellow box is the entry to a cloud, called post. The organization behind this cloud had the task of transporting letters and the information therein to addresses all over the world accurately and quickly.
The post also guarantees secrecy of the post. However, this is not always something you can rely on. At all times, there are and have been instances – both illegitimate and legitimized through strange fear-inspired laws – where a letter was opened and the content was examined. Depending on the content, the letter will be re-sealed and sent on its way – or else kept. These instances work very cannily. More often than not, the recipient will never notice that his letter has actually been tampered with, opened, read and re-sealed.
Well, but I only wrote this in order to make snail-mail understandable to the reader. For me, the question is now: who is actually the owner of such a letter and its content?
A snail-mail letter has been written (diligently!) and financed (paper, ink, stamps) by the sender. The recipient will get it through a messenger from the cloud (called postman).
So who is the owner of this letter? As far as the “hardware” is concerned, it seems an easy matter to me. Being a layman in the field of jurisprudence, I would consider paper and envelope as gift. The ink and the stamps do not really play a role. You can no longer use the ink and the stamp has been devaluated, too. The sender donated the paper and the envelope to the recipient. But what about the content?
Let us assume the sender and recipient are a married couple. The content of the letter is part of their marital communication. So who is now the owner of the content:
writer (sender) or reader (recipient)? Or does it belong to them both in equal shares? What if one of them wants to publish the letter – but the other one objects?
Will the right of ownership be affected if, for instance, the basis of the relationship is removed, if there is a divorce? Will the ownership of the text then go back to the writer (sender)? Who will then be permitted to make money with the letter?
What if the letter contains intellectual property of third parties, for instance if it contains a love poem by a contemporary author that was copied from a book? If it is used for “business purposes”, this would actually be theft. Can the recipient hand this on? Or is this only allowed if it remains “private” correspondence? Or will the recipient have to hand back the commodity, ask the original owner, and then probably give back to him what belongs to him?
And if so, how can this be done? How can I hand back something I read? What happens if third parties read the letter, legitimately or illegitimately? What exactly did they steal? Who did they steal from – the sender or the recipient? What damage was actually done?
What happens if the recipient destroys the letter – perhaps even without ever having read it? Can he do that – or is he violating the sender’s rights? After all, he destroyed data (property) that belong to the sender. And what if the sender made a photocopy before sending the letter? Can he publish it years later? Without asking the recipient?
And what happens if the letter is found by a third party? Will the content then belong to the finder? Perhaps not. Can the sender intervene if photocopies of the letter are, for instance, bought from the recipient by a publishing company and incorporated into a book?
What if the letter will later become very valuable? Is it fair if I buy an allegedly worthless letter and suddenly the value of said letter increases due to something that originated in the person who sold it to me? Or would this, perhaps, be against morality?
Is there really a difference between using content privately and for business purposes? If we had an internet exchange site for letters where no money is ever involved, would that be business?
Isn’t this all just nonsense?
And now let me project all these ideas to a world full of SMS, emails, twitter, facebook, google and the internet in general. Can all these questions be reasonably discussed and regulated legally? Or are the questions as such quite useless? Would it not be about time for us to actually do a radical about-face and start afresh on the legal side when it comes to the topic of personal data, copyright, etc.?
And when we make a fresh start, maybe we should put plugs into our ears as a precaution and sew the pockets of our suits shut – in order to prevent the lobby of the content merchants from damaging everything by using their influence.
RMD
P.S.
I still remember very well some letters between Heisenberg and Einstein. In 1969, Professor Lammel (Analysis I) read from these letters during his lectures at the then TH München (today TUM). It was a very nice, even if old-fashioned student’s experience.
If you like statesmanship, you can actually read letters written by Voltaire addressed to “Old Frederik”. Or if you are a little more on the revolutionary side: next year, Jean Paul is due a special birthday celebration. He would have been 250 years old. Isn’t that a good reason to read the letters he wrote and received?
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