steve jones raises an important point regarding which rules cover the use of web texts for research purposes. actually, three sets of rules may apply -- university rules regarding the ethics of research, copyright considerations, and privacy. fair use under copyright law would provide ethical justification for quoting from texts for research purposes -- but would not cover using complete messages. brenda danet and others have provided leadership in this regard by requesting permission to include entire messages or significant portions of them in books, while many others are on sound ground when they refer to or quote from texts studied via content analysis and other types of discourse analysis. even quotes from sources such as e-mail, however, could potentially trigger privacy concerns without consent. and so these all come around to where jones notes we should begin -- the consent required by university guidelines provides full legal protection on both copyright and privacy fronts. sandra braman