Re: mailing lists will move soon

Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> It has been brought to my attention that transferring all accounts
> automatically
> is not allowed until all subscribers have explicitly opted-in to do
> that.
>
> Since I don't believe this to happen in a reasonable timeframe, I'm
> afraid I have to ask you to resubscribe manually to the new lists.
>
> I wish to have done it automatically, but apparantly there are legal
> issues to be considered here which were previously unknown to me.
>
> I will post the http and e-mail subscription addresses for the new lists
> tomorrow.

I imagine that is what will have to happen now as a result of the
confusion, however I'd still be most interested to know if George's
views are applicable here.

The extent of the personal data being moved is a single email address &
the 'organisation' that is moving it is, I would think, the list
maintainer, not the owner of the mail server. I assume I'm right in
thinking the owners of the server, in either case, never have reason to
interfere with the list of addresses. As such, there is no movement of
personal data between organisations, as the list maintainer is remaining
unchanged.

If a company chooses to change where it hosts its data, does it have to
contact every customer it holds details on to get their permission? I
think not. What should matter is who is using the data & how. That's
what data protection laws are meant to police, not generally physical
locations.

That all said, any such laws which might be applicable exist for a
reason & it's pretty clear, to me at least, there's no good reason in
this case why the move shouldn't have been automatic, for the
convenience of everyone. It would have been nice if everyone had taken
the hint & not complained, since it has served no useful purpose.

IANAL which is why I'd love to know if the law is insane in some
jurisdictions or if some posters are just overly
cautious/paranoid/annoying ;)

-- 
Michael, (nb use of smiley to excuse rudeness)
m r o z a t u k g a t e w a y d o t n e t