[ih] deterioration of email (was Re: clever usc creation)

[Karl Auerbach]

On 7/29/26 6:36 PM, Gergely Buday via Internet-history wrote:
> ... In many countries e-mail is a legal document, no wonder that
> many want to avoid it.

With my lawyer hat on...

I am presuming by "legal document" that you mean something that can be 
admitted as evidence in a legal dispute, such as a dispute about whether 
a contract exits or what are the terms of that contract.

Here in the US email can be admissible evidence in a legal case, as can 
any expressive or illustrative material, even oral or visual.

Whether email, a text message, or a parchment with a embossed wax seal, 
a writing (or oral statement) still needs to be authenticated, be the 
"best evidence", get past the evidentiary rules (such as the hearsay 
rules), and be relevant, etc.  (The rules of evidence are rational but 
extraordinary complex and have driven many people to verge of 
distraction, or beyond.)

Email, because in its most basic form it can be easily forged, can have 
a high authentication hurdle to overcome.

One also needs to be clear about what email evidence is being used to 
prove.  Is one trying to prove something based on the semantic content 
of the email?  Or is one trying to use an email to explain ambiguities 
in another document?   Or is one, perhaps, only trying to demonstrate 
that two people know one another or that the sender is alive enough to 
send an email?  An email may be used even for odd purposes having 
nothing to do with the content - such as to indicate that there was 
working network connectivity at the sender's office.

Like emails, text messages, instagrams, tweets, or tik-tok dances can 
all be evidentiary materials - and they all have to pass through the 
same kind of hoops to become admissible.

The headers/wrappers of email (and the rest of this stuff) are also 
potentially admissible as evidence.  For example, this is why providers 
sometimes get discovery requests to hand over records of what IP 
addresses were allocated to what user at what time.

The internet adds a lot of complexity to these evidence questions - for 
instance, DNSSEC can improve credibility of evidence (although 
explaining it to a jury can be hard) while rapid changes of DNS zone 
files and the presence of caching can reduce credibility of a DNS name 
at any given moment.

(All of this can get really "fun" when we begin to realize that people 
are now using non-human agents - such as AI tools - to generate emails 
or other materials.)

The bottom line of all of this is that a person who avoids email and 
prefers other forms may discover that all of those forms can be admissible.

         --karl--