Massachusetts has ruled that an e-mail provider who copied and read customers' e-mails without their consent was not acting illegally. The court ruled that the mail was not in transit and was in storage since it was in the RAM of the provider's computer. Stored communications are not protected by the wiretap provisions of ECPA; they have lesser protection under the Stored Communications Act.
This e-mail had not reached its intended destination, a person, not a server, and old wiretap laws just don't mesh well with modern systems. This RAM storage distinction seems pretty hazy. Is VoIP stored when it passes through the servers' memory? As the court acknowledged, attempting to interpret ECPA to deal with Internet communications just isn't working. We need new legislation to handle these technologies more clearly.
Thanks to Alex Grinberg and his more in-depth analysis.