| | I don't know the specifics of the post in question by Barbara; perhaps she had already obtained the okay of the letter writer to post an excerpt.
Generally, though, it is illegal...whether or not remuneration is involved. For example, suppose someone wrote you a private letter revealing personal information, and assumed it were being done in confidence. Do you think the person would really care if you published that private information, even though you received no remuneration? Or is the mere fact of your publication damaging to him? Reputation is a value independent of financial considerations.
Also, by publishing or circulating private correspondence, you are depriving its author of potential remuneration that he might receive in the future, should he decided to publish that correspondence himself, or to develop ideas contained therein for commercial use and/or publication.
In short, copyright laws protect the commercial interests, reputation and privacy of a writer. (Copyright does not apply, of course, to things written or said in a public forum or setting, such as this one, unless one has specifically arranged that an article published in a forum is accepted only on condition of copyright protection, and places a copyright notice on it.)
The anarchist approach to these problems would logically require everyone to cease all communication, verbal or in writing, on the premise that anything you say or write, even in confidence to a single individual, immediately becomes public property. The logical alternative would force you to charge everyone a fee for the privilege of communicating with you in the first place.
(Edited by Robert Bidinotto on 3/29, 6:42am)
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