The Modern Archivist

Megaupload Founder in More Trouble

By Benjamin Lee

Kim Dotcom, one of the founders of Megaupload.com, was arrested last week for his website that took away over 500 million from copyright holders and promoted online piracy. Dotcom is under fire once again for a ‘joke email’ he sent out two years ago that authorities got a hold of. Since Dotcom has a long track record of previous run-ins with the law, it comes as no surprise that authorities did not take his joke so lightly. In April of 2010, Dotcom sent the following out to his neighborhood watch.

Dear Neighborhood-watch,
As you all know I recently moved into the Neighborhood and I am a former hacker. Well I was just hacking into a local mail server and guess what I found.
First of all let me assure you that having a criminal Neighbor like me comes with benefits.
1. Our newly opened local money laundering facility can help you with your tax fraud optimization.
2. Our network of international insiders can provide you with valuable stock tips.
3. My close personal relations with other (far worse) criminals can help you whenever you have to deal with a nasty Neighbor.
In all seriousness: My wife, two kids and myself love New Zealand and ‘We come in peace’.
Fifteen years ago I was a hacker and 10 years ago I was convicted for insider trading. Hardly the kind of crimes you need to start a witch hunt for. Since then I have been a good boy, my criminal records have been cleared, and I created a successful Internet company that employs 100+ people.
All the media has to report are old news. Why? Because I have chosen to avoid the media. Just look what the media did to this Neighborhood. Scary.
Now you can make a choice: 1: Call Interpol, the CIA, and the Queen of England and try to get me on the next plane out of New Zealand. 2: Sit back, relax and give me a chance to do good for New Zealand and possibly the Neighborhood.
If you feel like it come over for coffee sometimes. And don’t forget to bring the cocaine (joke). All the best, Kim.
The Guardian

Though I found the email humorous, neighbors did not, reporting that it “scared the hell out of everybody”. Dotcom may have had the right intention in trying to ease his neighbors’ worries, but he can only regret sending that email now, as it alludes to his past criminal behavior and possible current drug use. This email was sent almost two years ago, and Dotcom probably thought nothing would come of a harmless email. Boy, was he wrong!

More and more companies are investing in email archiving solutions, as they help litigation processes run more smoothly, provide a clearer picture to trials and cases, and save time and money! This is bad news for people like Dotcom, but good news for everyone else in the world.

I spam, you spam, we all spam for more spam?

By Benjamin Lee
It was announced today that the average number of promotional email campaigns sent by top retailers to subscribers reached an all-time high this past year. “Retailers sent each of their subscribers 177 promotional email campaigns on average last year, up 16% from 2010,” said Chad White, Research Director at Responsys, who tracks the email marketing activity of hundreds of the top retailers. “Since 2008, the average number of promotional email campaigns sent by the top retailers to each of their subscribers has risen 51%.” But it isn’t just marketing emails and general spam that has been continually increasing at an exponential rate; the usage of email in general has skyrocketed.

While email usage may have started out as a casual means of communication, it has recently transformed into the lifeblood of most organizations and serves as the primary mode of communication for almost all businesses. In an increasingly paperless world, emails have replaced written memos as a standard business record, and transferring files in the form of attachments have become commonplace. This coupled with the increase in spam and marketing promos have employees’ inboxes cluttered, hitting email storage restrictions faster than ever before.

So what can companies do for relief from the steady stream of spam? Investing in an email archiving solution can alleviate the pains of spam by providing the following benefits:
-reducing the load on the company’s mail server
-enable users to self-restore any deleted email from backup
-maintain an archive of all email, which can be easily searched for compliance or eDiscovery
-save time for employees as they no longer need to organize their inboxes

Times are changing, and it is up to you to keep up with the ongoing trend of increasing email and spam levels. Email archiving solutions represent a viable solution to meet most of these ongoing demands.

What Happens When A Company Ends Email?

By Elle Byram. Esq., CEDS

Would elimination of all internal email be an effective records management strategy? Could it potentially reduce the costs of e-discovery? Perhaps. But at what cost to the business? Do we need email to effectively conduct business? I would imagine the answer would be, as any good lawyer will say, it depends. However, we may soon find out.

Atos SA’s chief executive Thierry Breton recently made the decision to stop using all internal email – company-wide – by mid-2013. Breton is in turn requiring the $13 billion company that operates in 42 countries to use “instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface to communicate.” The decision was not made as a records management strategy but as a business strategy. The rationale for ceasing the use of emails is based on the conclusion that too many employees waste too much time sending useless emails. (And text messages, instant messaging and Facebook posts don’t constitute predominantly useless communication, which because of their inherent and intended limitations are difficult to make truly useful?)

Atos estimated from its own research that only 15% of its internal emails were actually useful. In a records management world, this seems to be a very generous proportion of emails. Some studies have found that less than 5% of all corporate emails have business value. Perhaps the Atos employees are actually more focused and efficient in their use of email compared with the average corporate employee. Something we should applaud. Or maybe their definition of “useful” is so broad as to actually be a tad bit wasteful.

Regardless of their motives, Atos may end up with fewer emails that could impact both their records management and e-discovery. The halting of all email communication is something a lot of records managers and legal departments would love. However, whether Atos’s alternatives will actually lessen the burdens that email causes companies is yet to be seen (and may never be intentionally made public). Their alternatives – instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface – may be more challenging forms of communication to retain causing more headaches for records managers and the legal department. However, if the alternative communication methods truly produce a reduction in the amount of information sent, no doubt a debatable point, perhaps this will offset the complications of retaining this type of information making retention of it about equivalent to the retention of email.