[EatenByGrues]

Maybe I'm missing something here but it seems that lately it has been pretty popular to post other peoples e-mail conversations (see the whole TechCrunch vs. Fortune post a while back). I'm starting to think you shouldn't e-mail anyone who runs a major tech blog unless you want to see it made public.

[raganwald]

I have always thought that the basic rule of email civility was that emails are private unless permission to post publicly is explicitly granted.

I don't think bloggers of any kind have a special exemption, major or minor. It's simple courtesy to ask "May I quote you on this?" I try to remember to do it and I apologize if I've fallen short of this standard. Old-school reporters are usually make it clear when a conversation is "On the record."

If I got an email response from Steve Jobs I would probably want to talk about it, but I wouldn't post it anywhere without asking first. The furthest I would go is to paraphrase it: "He emailed to tell me to take my talk of proprietary platform development being akin to sharecropping and shove it up my USB port."

So what I would say is that lately people have been pretty un-civil about private emails. Frankly, I'm a little disappointed when I see it anywhere, regardless of who is doing the quoting or who is being quoted.

[CodeMage]

Quite right, but expand that to you shouldn't send anything over the Internet unless either:

a) the privacy of it is guaranteed and that guarantee can be legally enforced

or

b) you don't mind it being made public

[rbanffy]

And, most of all, when you are an important public figure, you must be very careful with what you express to anyone but your closest friends.