Zzzoot

Recently I was composing an email in gmail and - like I sometimes do - decided to press the discard button and not send the email. But not before gmail indicated that it had saved my message. After I discarded the email, I checked my "Drafts" to see if it showed up there. No, as I expected. But where do they go? Anywhere? Are they in some kind of Google never-never land? And more important: are they retrievable when someone comes to Google with a court order for someone's emails? Are they stored but Google doesn't release them because technically they are not email? Might they be of value, perhaps revealing information someone had decided was too hot to send in an email? These things are not clear from gmail's Privacy Policy Notice and Google's broader Privacy Policy . And no, I wasn't concerned about any of my own discarded emails. :-)

Lecture: " Open Source Licences and the Boundaries of Knowledge Production " Michael Madison , Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research, University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 Time: 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Place: Fauteux Hall , room 351 Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa Description: What is the future of open source licensing? The presentation will use Jacbosen v. Katzer, a recent opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that analyzes an open source software license, to frame a discussion of open source issues that are conceptual, historical, and practical. For more information . RSVP needed to techlaw@uottawa.ca or on Facebook group . Dr. Madison appears to be a fairly enlightened lawyer who has studied and published on IP, copyright and (software) licensing issues: Intellectual Property and Americana, or Why IP Gets the Blues . 18 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 677 (2008). The Idea of the Law Rev...