E-mail Confidential - Who's afraid of Time Inc.'s legal disclaimer? By Jack Shafer: "E-mail Confidential Who's afraid of Time Inc.'s legal disclaimer? By Jack Shafer Posted Tuesday, June 1, 2004, at 3:42 PM PT

The other day, a Time Inc. journalist of my acquaintance sent me an e-mail from his corporate e-mail account. I read it quickly and was about to hit the delete icon when I spotted this extraordinary 114-word "disclaimer" sloshing around at the bottom. It read:

This message is the property of Time Inc. or its affiliates. It may be legally privileged and/or confidential and is intended only for the use of the addressee(s). No addressee should forward, print, copy, or otherwise reproduce this message in any manner that would allow it to be viewed by any individual not originally listed as a recipient. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized disclosure, dissemination, distribution, copying or the taking of any action in reliance on the information herein is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete this message.

Thank you.

Ignoring the e-mail's threats, I forwarded it to my 175-pound Samoan attorney for his opinion, and he convinced me that Time Inc. has much more to fear from me than I have to fear from Time Inc. In fine Socratic fashion, my counsel walked me through the disclaimer, sentence by sentence, encouraging me to add my own thinking to our exercise. Here are my notes.