[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.