Acidus wrote:
] Ok, I see what they are doing: IMs are 2 party point to point
] conversations, like phones. This raises more questions than it
] answers.
]
] -Personally I dismiss an IM conversation is like a telephone
] call. Its more like sending telegrams to each other. I wonder
] how consent applies to telegrams: Is it illegal to keep a copy
] of a telegram without 2 part consent? Or is the very natural
] of sending someone a message as a block a consent to store a
] copy?
]
] -I argue the very nature of Chatrooms and IMs are so different
] than telephone calls,
]
] ...
]
] Can the consent consent laws as written even apply to IMs and
] chatrooms?

[ This is very interesting. I tend to agree with Acidus, for many of the same reasons. I'd draw an anology with email also. Email is stored, explicitly, as part of the specification... people have conversations all the time via email, so is it more of a letter analogy or a phone conversation anlogy. The lines have begun to blur as networks speed up and become ubiquitous.

I, for one, save every single IM conversation I have. It's a setting in iChat, which I enabled, because people often IM addresses or phone numbers or URL's which I fail to record or use... sometimes I accidentally close the chat window, forgetting that there was something upscreen that i wanted to keep. At any rate, every IM i've sent, or that anyone has sent me, since i got my Mac, is stored in a folder on the hard disk, sorted by name and date. In the same way, I keep all potentially useful email, and save physical letters/correspondence that may be needed in the future. If I could get a digital text transcript of my phone conversations out of the phone, I might save those too.

Anyway, I don't expect this law to go much further, if it even holds up to appeal. -k]

RE: Chat, Copy, Paste, Prison