Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research". Publicly funded researchers should be required to publish their data and research results. They should not have to give up their private lives.
Emails are only one part of it, according to TFA there are other research documents and data too. Emails are one thing, it is communication with an expectation of privacy (and the ruling of being proprietary shouldn't apply to that anyway), documentation and research data is another thing entirely. A fundamental concept of science is that documentation and research are meant to be shared.
Here is the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section at the crux of the case, one of the law’s exemptions from disclosure:
“Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learningin the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issueswhere such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.” ...
In a decision written by Justice Donald W. Lemons, the court ruled that “the higher education research exemption’s desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters.
And now here's the part that really bugs me:
Mann said after the ruling, “This is a victory for science...
No, it's not! Our high schools really need to do a better job teacher students what science is and not just memorizing the first 6 steps in the first week of class and then memorizing facts that were found using science (biology, chemistry etc). Just because in this case the other side who is trying to get your data has even less understanding of what science is (and will no doubt intentionally misconstrue your data) does not mean this is a victory for science. There is no concept of proprietary knowledge in science, quite the opposite in fact.
