It's intellectual property, my thoughts, ideas and expressions. Doesn't matter if it's on parchment, paper, wax cylinder, records, 8 tracks, cassette tapes, laser disk, vhs, cd, DVD or digital media, it's mine. The fact the fuckwads that run this country want to ignore that fact is the problem. If they can take my emails because its not legally mine once it's transmitted, then im downloading all the music I can, because no one owns it once it's transmitted.
And that depends on what the terms and conditions of whatever service you use, your internet provider, email provider, this forum, social media, whatever, what they say can be done with said "intellectual property", you did read them, didn't you?
I mean, an email does have a reasonable expectation of privacy, much as it was written on paper with a quill pen and sealed with wax. But that changes if it's a "work" email as any communications related to or on behalf of the business via their services belong to the company, you have no expectation of privacy using a corporate or government email service.
Same goes for telephones, cellphones, etc.
You posting on social media, or openly on a forum such as this, has no reasonable expectation of privacy, you are making your words public, open to anyone.
So there are distinctions that have to be made regarding your thoughts, there are things that have to be realised, it all depends on the bytes and the context in which they are sent.
