Legal Question in Technology Law in California

Re: Email Storage Requirements for Businesses and ISP Co

Most businesses now have a document retention policy (or it may be titled document destruction policy). This is more important than ever in light of the new federal rules of civil procedure that address electronic discovery, which go into effect this December.

(If your business does not have such a policy, see an attorney about creating one.)

However, it is unrealistic to expect an ISP to keep all email, especially email that its customer has indicated lacks value. The storage requirements would be awesome.

It may be possible that the ISP has a policy requiring it to keep deleted email for 30 days, but I think it would not be unreasonable for the ISP to have a policy that allowed for immediate deletion of unwanted email.

If you would like for your ISP to keep email even after you delete it, perhaps you can negotiate a rider in your contract whereby you pay extra for the extra service.

Re: Email Storage Requirements for Businesses and ISP Co

An ISP has a contractual relationship with its clients. When your business signed up for the service, you agreed to certain terms....perhaps they were negotiated at arm's length, or perhaps you were handed a pre-printed form contract with a message-storage time or space limit already there. Either way, when you signed the contract, the ISP and you established the ISP's storage responsibility. Read the contract; if the ISP breached it, your remedy (if they won't pay your damages voluntarily) is to sue.