Employer Used an Employee's Name and Email Address for a Contentious Exchange

Good afternoon,

I am a manager at an off-campus college textbook store (very small local business). Often times there are professors for the university we cater towards that require custom-made copy-written material for their courses. One such professor, the copyright holder, do not allow our location to stock and sell her material. However, my store's owner (my boss) instructed me to obtain a quote for this professor's material from the third-party business that produces the material. We successfully received a quote and an order was placed for copies. I then received, via my work email, an email from the professor exclaiming her disappointment that the third-party company would go behind her back and sell he her copy-written material.

It is at this point that my boss began (unbeknownst to me until he decided to inform me, mind you) to have an email conversation with the copyright holder using my email address and signing my name to the bottom of said emails. Now the copyright holder is threatening legal action and I am afraid that my boss has thrown me under the bus to keep him from being liable of any legal issues.

I have confronted my employer (with a witness present) about impersonating me and have made it known that I am not comfortable with how this has played out thus far. I have also managed to get him to admit to signing my name to said emails via a text message. I am open to any advise that can help me clear my name of any involvement. I am currently reliant on this job to cover my living costs and bills, so I am kind of stuck in a hairy situation. Any advice is certainly appreciated.

-Best

Don't you password protect your email account? If you don't; start.


Beyond that im kind of missing your point. If the entity you purchase the documents from had the legal right to sell you what they did, then I'm not seeing the violation of any law. So, did the entity you purchase the documents from have the legal right to sell them to you?

Who placed the order?

My email is password protected, but somehow my employer managed to either guess my login information or obtain it through some other means that I'm not aware of (more protection can certainly be address on my part, I'll admit), but I don't think that would trump the fact that he impersonated me without my permission.

As for the copyright issue, it's a little tricky so allow me to explain further.
I work for an off-campus bookstore that is not affiliated with the university we cater to in an official fashion. Through the Open Records Act, I'm legally allowed to request any and all correspondence that my counter-parts at the Official Campus Bookstore obtain from professors and departments. This information is used to stock and shelve the current semester's texts/materials. When a copywritten text is being used for a course, we obtain the .pdf etc files from the Campus Bookstore via these Open Records Act requests.

I then forward such information to the third-party printers/publishers to place our off-campus quotes/orders. Often times I will received an email from these third-party publishers asking for proof of permission from the copyright holder (in this case, the professor that authored the material) before an order can be placed. In this situation, I received the material information from the Campus Bookstore as normal. I then forwarded the information to the third-party publisher for a quote. I then received a confirmation and tracking information for the order...with no such permission request from the publisher.

Once the product arrived, we shelved the material as normal. I assume that at this point word somehow spread to the professor (copyright holder) that her material was being sold on our shelves, to which she sent an email stating her displeasure that we would sell her material without her permission and that the third-party would go behind her back to provide us with such material. This is the point where my boss began to have argumentative conversations with the involved parties...but doing so under the guise of me. Therefore, I am not quite sure who is to blame. My bookstore for not providing proof of permission to sell the material? Or the third-party who allowed us to place an order for the material? Also, if this ends up being a legal issue, I'm not sure if I personally would be responsible for any blame since I technically did not have any say in the issue...despite the fact that my employer was impersonating me via my email.

I really appreciate the quick responses and the advise. Many thanks, indeed.

-Best

Your employer has the legal right to use your work email account. It isn't impersonation and it isn't illegal.

If any illegalities arise vis a vis the copyrighted material, you will not be held personally accountable.

So you're OK on all fronts. :)

What state is this in. Most open records acts do not allow for private creations to be provided to anybody.


Even if you were able to obtain the documents, unless you had permission or know of some basis to be able to reproduce and distribute the document, there is an infringement issue.

Whose name was used to request the printing of the material? If yours then you do have something to worry about. From your original post it sounds like you made the order.

Im in total disagreement with eerelations. I see a lot of issues to be concerned about.


Is the material still on your shelves? If so I would suggest removing it unti this is resolved. Willful infringement, especially for commercial purposes, can be a very serious matter.

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Quoting eerelations

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Your employer has the legal right to use your work email account. It isn't impersonation and it isn't illegal.

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the employer may have a right to use an employees work email but they do not have the right to represent themselves as the employee.

Georgia is the state.

The material is NOT on the shelf and to be honest, not a single sale was made for any copies. So no actually monetary transactions have been made in terms of retailing the material. I have also contacted the third-party publisher to keep them abreast of the situation, along with a request for refund/return instructions to remove the material from my location completely.

As far as the impersonation of my email goes...let me be clear. My employer was 100% pretending to be me in regards to verbiage, writing style, etc. When the copyright holder emailed my boss via HIS actual work email, he responded as if he was not privy to the email conversation between "me" (him pretending to be me, that is) and her. Again, I have been able to get verbal, and written, documentation from him admitting that he knowingly represented himself as me.

I hope this information helps. Thanks again for the educated responses. Very much appreciated everyone.

-Best

It doesn't matter that your boss was "100% pretending to be" you. If it's a work email address, your employer is legally free to do this. Period.

Regarding the copyrighted material, if your employer wants to embroil itself in a copyright battle with one of its employees (i.e., the professor) then your employer is free to do so. You will not be held personally accountable in this battle even if your employer is pretending that you are (by "impersonating" you via email).

You are safe. Just do what your boss tells you to do, and if the you-know-what hits the fan, it's on your boss, not you.

Thanks. That's what I was trying to get to. Sorry for the walls of explanation. I just wanted be be sure that if the you-know-what was headed in the fan's direction that I would not be held accountable personally. Thank you again for the council!

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Quoting eerelations

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It doesn't matter that your boss was "100% pretending to be" you. If it's a work email address, your employer is legally free to do this. Period.

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Where exactly are you coming up it this? His boss does not have the right to impersonate his employee just because the email is hosted on the company server.

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Quoting eerelations

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It doesn't matter that your boss was "100% pretending to be" you. If it's a work email address, your employer is legally free to do this. Period.

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I disagree. While the employer may control the e-mail account, set the terms of its use, etc., the boss may not impersonate an employee, whether using e-mail or otherwise, if doing so would amount to fraud or some other wrong, like making it appear that the impersonated employee is the one engaged in illegal or wrongful conduct of the boss. It is certainly not the law that just because an employer owns an e-mail account the employer may use it in any way he/she pleases. All it means is that the employer may not be guilty of illegally accessing the account.

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Quoting eerelations

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Regarding the copyrighted material, if your employer wants to embroil itself in a copyright battle with one of its employees (i.e., the professor) then your employer is free to do so. You will not be held personally accountable in this battle even if your employer is pretending that you are (by "impersonating" you via email).

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I disagree with that too. Do you not see the risk to the impersonated person here? The other people may believe it is the impersonated person doing the wrongful conduct, and thus embroil the impersonated person into a legal dispute that he or she should not be be involved in. You may think the employee safe because he or she can point to the boss impersonating him/her, but if the boss denies the impersonation and the employee lacks good evidence to prove it, then what? That’s the kind of thing that wrongful convictions are built upon. And even if the employee can prove it, why should he or she have to do that? Why must the employee have to spend the time and money to defend for something that was not his/her doing in the first place?

The employee has written admissions from the boss that the boss "impersonated" the employee. The employee also has no legal means to stop the boss from impersonating him/her. The employee might be able to obtain some sort of injunction against the boss to prevent said boss from doing this, however, the process of obtaining the injunction might be more costly and time-consuming (not to mention totally ruining whatever positive relations he/she may have with his/her boss right now) than simply waiting to see if he/she is named in a lawsuit, and then proving that he/she did not partake in the contentious copyright conversation.

I thought I posted it but apparently deleted it instead. Georgia has a law against this

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ocga 16-9-93

d) Computer Forgery. Any person who creates, alters, or deletes any data contained in any computer or computer network, who, if such person had created, altered, or deleted a tangible document or instrument would have committed forgery under Article 1 of this chapter, shall be guilty of the crime of computer forgery. The absence of a tangible writing directly created or altered by the offender shall not be a defense to the crime of computer forgery if a creation, alteration, or deletion of data was involved in lieu of a tangible document or instrument.

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so if the boss sent a letter and signed employees name it would be forgery, correct? If so, then sending mail in the name of the employee and signing employees name is also a crime

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Quoting eerelations

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The employee also has no legal means to stop the boss from impersonating him/her. .

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actually she does but yes, it certainly would put a chill on their relationship.


But the impersonation is irrelevent in the copyright issue. Op can be named in such a suit. Whether op has a valid defense is based on the totality of
the facts but it still wouldn't prevent op from being sued.

Here is what I am confused about:

Unless the professor's work was vanity published, I do not understand how the professor can determine to whom the textbook is sold...either on a wholesale or retail basis. Is that somehow part of the deal when professors write textbooks?

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Quoting llworking

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Here is what I am confused about:

Unless the professor's work was vanity published, I do not understand how the professor can determine to whom the textbook is sold...either on a wholesale or retail basis. Is that somehow part of the deal when professors write textbooks?

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The owner of a copyright has absolute control over the copying and distribution of their work. Unless the agreement with the school allows the on school publisher the rights to allow others to copy and/or distribute the works, the op would be infringing if they copied or distributed the works.

or if the professors contract demanded the rights be transferred to the school. Then it would be up to the school to allow copying or distribution. Works for hire would be owned by the employer but I suspect this is not a work for hire matter. In fact the op actually stated the professor is the copyright owner in this situation.

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Quoting jk

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The owner of a copyright has absolute control over the copying and distribution of their work. Unless the agreement with the school allows the on school publisher the rights to allow others to copy and/or distribute the works, the op would be infringing if they copied or distributed the works.

or if the professors contract demanded the rights be transferred to the school. Then it would be up to the school to allow copying or distribution. Works for hire would be owned by the employer but I suspect this is not a work for hire matter. In fact the op actually stated the professor is the copyright owner in this situation.

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I understand all of that, but once its in the hands of a publisher, unless its vanity published, its not standard for a publisher to be limited to whom they sell the books. The object is to sell as many of the books as possible.

So unless its common practice for textbooks to be vanity published (or the equivalent of vanity published) the whole situation makes no sense...but then again, since the professor controls the materials used in his/her class, therefore having a captive sales base then perhaps vanity publishing is not so unusual in a university setting.

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Quoting llworking

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I understand all of that, but once its in the hands of a publisher, unless its vanity published, its not standard for a publisher to be limited to whom they sell the books. The object is to sell as many of the books as possible.

So unless its common practice for textbooks to be vanity published (or the equivalent of vanity published) the whole situation makes no sense...but then again, since the professor controls the materials used in his/her class, therefore having a captive sales base then perhaps vanity publishing is not so unusual in a university setting.

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actually, especially when you are talking about college texts it is very common for the distribution to be limited.

When you are speaking of a professors writing it is even more limited.

A publisher is a wholesaler and they can only sell to whomever the rights holder has agreed to. Once you get beyond the first sale doctrine (first retail sale) the owner of the book can sell it to anybody they choose to.