The author of one of the books I blogged wrote me an interesting reply, but sent it via e-mail. Can I place her comment in my blog comments without violating some written or unwritten code? —John SpurlockBlogging E-Mailed CommentsE-Mail)
If I were to send a letter to the editor to a newspaper, I shouldn’t be surprised if it were published — that’s what a “letter to the editor” is for. If I were to send an e-mail to a website that features published e-mails, I shouldn’t be surprised if that e-mail were published — that’s how the site gets its content in the first place.
John’s situation is more complex. As I understand it, he has written a traditional print review of a book, but posted a longer version of that review on his blog (“The Blue Monkey Review“). The author could have commented directly on John’s blog (indeed, another author has done exactly that). Instead, the author chose to send an e-mail.
I think the context is very important here.
I presume that the audience for my own blog is net savvy enough to know one shouldn’t e-mail anything that one wouldn’t want to become public. (Though how often we all follow that guidline is open to question.)
Since John is asking the question about an e-mail sent to him by a book author (that is, someone who makes a living by writing), and since the academic subject of their correspondence is presumably not cyberculture or online writing conventions, I’d say I wouldn’t think twice about mentioning the e-mail, paraphrasing it in order to write a response, or even quoting a sections for the purpose of defending/explaining/rebutting/continuing the intelletual discourse in another blog entry. It’s possible the author simply wasn’t familiar with the convention of posting comments in a weblog. Since the author didn’t actually type it there, I’d do what I did here — create a separate blog entry to introduce the e-mail, and link back to the original discussion. Still, before I’d post the whole thing, I’d ask the author’s permission. And I’d start blogging my rebuttal while awaiting the reply. If the author doesn’t reply after a few days and a telephone follow-up (if possible), I’d paraphrase the e-mail and/or quote selective, and post my response anyway (after briefly explaining my attempts to contact the author).
(And by the way, I did ask John’s permission to post his inquriy and blog my response.)
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I think in John's case, since the author of the e-mail is an academic whose subject is not computer-related, it's plausible that the author might not be aware of the "if you send it to me I'll publish it" attitude. Presumably if the author wanted this text published in the first place, simply appending a comment to John's blog post would have been faster. The author either isn't familiar with the function and use of comments, or chose not to use them for some reason.
I don't know about the US, but in Norway the receiver of a letter (also an email) has the right to do what ever they like with that letter, including publishing it (this does not include the normal situations where you have a duty to clients, patients or students, of course). It is polite to ask though, particularly if it is a sensitive letter. However, if it was downright rude and pissed me off, I would not hesitate!