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email and news This page is under development. Email doesn't exist in a copyright vacuum, although it's common for people to forward messages and to incorporate (often without acknowledgement) text from online publications. A handwritten letter is covered by copyright. And so is a typewritten one. Generally, the recipient of the letter owns the paper and ink. The author (or employer, if it's written on their behalf) owns the intellectual property in the letter. When you send the letter you don't necessarily relinquish the copyright: you merely give away the paper. One effect has been that literary figures - cantankerous or otherwise - such as TS Eliot, JD Salinger and Patrick White could exert some control over biographers. As Iain Hamilton recounts In Search Of J D Salinger (London, Heinemann 88), the famously reclusive author stymied an attempted biography by refusing permission to print his letters or publish extensive quotes. Hamilton could read the letters - in academic archives and private collections - but not publish. Copyright protection for old-fashioned letters is automatic the moment the ink hits the paper. It doesn't depend on the quality of the prose. What about email? No ink, no paper, and recipients who often think nothing of forwarding to others (and so on adfinitum) or having fun with cut-&-paste. The federal Attorney-General indicated that the new Australian copyright legislation, effective 5 March, provides protection for email: online doesn't, to some people's surprise, equal copyright free. One response to the resultant brouhaha is both simple and practical: indicate in your email if you don't wish it forwarded or otherwise published. Some organisations and individuals, particularly law firms, already include such statements as a tail for every formal communication. US lawyer Thomas Field highlighted some of the issues in his 1999 article for the Journal of Electronic Publishing.