I have heard that once you drop a letter into a US (blue) mailbox it is no longer yours. Is this true?

I know the Post Office will allow you to retrieve something you've mailed prior to delivery if they can identify you as the sender.

Also, as the article points out, ownership of a physical piece of paper is a completely different matter from ownership of the copyright to what's written on it. The latter is certainly not relinquished by the simple act of mailing.

I don't know about the US, but that's definitely true here in Canada.

One year I made a few bucks working as a "Christmas casual" at a mail sorting plant. In our orientation, we were told that if we happened to handle a card or letter which was addressed to us, and took it home instead of passing it through the system, we'd be fired on the spot, and perhaps charged with theft. Same if we found a letter we ourselves had written, but had changed our minds about wanting to send. The mail is the property of Canada Post from the minute it's dropped into a mailbox until the minute it's delivered to your house.

As for garbage, the Supreme Court of Canada has just ruled that you have no right to private garbage:

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"The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed an appeal from a convicted ecstasy trafficker who argued police violated his privacy rights by searching through his trash.

"In a 7-0 ruling issued Thursday, the court said Russell Stephen Patrick had abandoned his privacy rights when he put the garbage bags out for collection on the edge of his property behind his house.

"The bags were unprotected and within easy reach of anyone walking by in the public alleyway, including street people, bottle pickers, urban foragers, nosey neighbours and mischievous children, not to mention dogs and assorted wildlife, as well as the garbage collectors and the police," wrote the court."

If the U.S. had been smart enough to copyright its decisions, it could sue the Canadian Supreme Court for theft of copyrighted materials. Do you Canadians steal all your legal decisions from us or just the ones about garbage?

Touch-ee! (I grant you, the wording lacked something in originality. Perhaps our Court feels confident and secure enough to learn from others, on occasion).

Tell you what -- ship us back Dahlia Lithwick, and we'll call it square. Though perhaps she's having more fun covering the US Supremes than she would with our lot.

Robert Beck:

Touch-ee! (I grant you, the wording lacked something in originality. Perhaps our Court feels confident and secure enough to learn from others, on occasion).

Tell you what -- ship us back Dahlia Lithwick, and we'll call it square. Though perhaps she's having more fun covering the US Supremes than she would with our lot.

That would only be fair if you sent me Hot Maggie T.lol

It's an interesting question. In the shipping business, the shipper does not take ownership of or liability for the goods, and the transfer of ownership and liability are defined in a sales contract.

For goods sent through the mail, I assume the same would apply. For letters and such, with no monetary value, I don't know.

"property" is a collection of legal attributes that can differ from category to category, person to person, and context to context.

Is a human corpse property? Yes, but only for certain limited purposes. In most states, the next of kin "owns" it for purposes of deciding its disposal. But if he wanted to embalm the departed and and display him on his front lawn? Suddenly his property right in the corpse wouldn't seem so absolute.

In the case of U.S. mail, I'd guess (I'm not going to look it up) that, while the sender relinquishes control over a letter he places in the system, he doesn't relinquish all ownership rights, if only because an undeliverable letter is normally returned to the sender. The postal service may not have a strict duty to return undeliverable mail--they may regard that as a courtesy--but even if not, they clearly wouldn't have the right to dispose of it by giving it to somebody other than the sender. So to that degree, the sender would retain some legal right of possession. Once the letter is properly delivered, then the sender would lose all property interest in it, because its ownership is transferred to the recipient.

edhgirl:

If the U.S. had been smart enough to copyright its decisions, it could sue the Canadian Supreme Court for theft of copyrighted materials. Do you Canadians steal all your legal decisions from us or just the ones about garbage?

Little known fact about copyright law:

Government documents are not copyrightable.

I don't think that Canada Post "owns" the letters it receives, it rather receives them in trust, that is, if you are working for Canada Post, you have to treat all items the same way, to do certain things with (frank them, sort them, deliver them, etc.). So when you see an item addressed to you, or a letter you yourself have written, it's irrelevant that the letter or card has a personal connection to you, because you are on the job, acting as an agent of Canada Post, and the job's requirements (essentially, to maintain that trust) supersede any personal involvements. And that's why it's possible you could be charged with theft, because while the letter is with Canada Post, while it isn't their property, neither is it yours. Of course, if they've fired you, they're unlikely to charge you with anything, so I'd regard that part of it as an idle threat.

That sounds about right. No doubt there was an element of bluster to that orientation session.

Trivia (at least, trivia from my point of view, these many years later): as a "Christmas casual," you didn't need to steal anything, or even screw up significantly, to get fired. If you were just fractionally too slow understanding an order from a touchy (and probably, in this case, half-crazy) supervisor, you could get "sent home" on the spot. I saw it happen, one midnight shift. Whether the guy was fired in the formal sense I don't know, but I expect he didn't called for another shift again.

And howbeit that we paid union dues, we were told explicitly that the collective agreement wouldn't cover us in such cases -- i.e., no chance of filing a grievance.

You do not lose ownership of mail once you put it in a mailbox. You, yourself, can retrieve it from your home mailbox, but not from a Post Office or U.S. Post Box. You can ask for return of a mail piece from a postal employee, but they must obey the rules as to whether you can reclaim it. Once the letter is on its way, the mail piece is still yours until it is delivered to the recipient. Only the recipient may retrieve a mail piece from their mailbox.

A mailbox is protected under 18 USC Section 1705. Quote:

The willful destruction of a mailbox, or mail within it, and allows for a fine and up to three years of imprisonment for persons who do so. Damaging, destroying or tampering with mail boxes or with the US mail is a federal crime.