An offlist colleague asks me to post the following:
 
Is it a breach of copyright, or ethics, for someone to quote in published
work a communication they have read on an email network like the Humanist
discussion group?  This kind of informal academic exchange provides great
data for, say, historians of ideas or linguists.  But if someone wanted to
exploit it as a data source, would they have to ask permission from (a)the
sender of the message, (b) network users generally?  Assuming citation were
permitted, should the content be cited without naming the sender (as with
informants in social science research?)  Who decides this kind of issue?
--Deborah Cameron, University of Strathclyde, e-mail [log in to unmask]
VAXE.