Some of the most interesting content might be barred from the online digital archive because of copyright restrictions. When a person composes a letter the text is automatically copyrighted by the creator. When a letter is mailed it may be owned physically by the recipient, but the text cannot be freely published in a book or online. Hence, a letter from, e. g., Aldous Huxley, or Robert Anton Wilson to Timothy Leary cannot be placed online unless the composer or the deceased’s estate gives a thumbs up.

An estate might assert the paramount importance of personal privacy to remove a letter from an online archive. Alternatively, an estate might wish to publish and profit from a collection of letters without competition from a freely accessible repository.

In the court case “Salinger v. Random House” an unauthorized biographer of the mysteriously hermitical novelist extensively used the unpublished letters of Salinger without his permission. Salinger sued and won based on the legal theory that he controlled the copyright on the letters that he composed.

Of course, maybe most of Leary’s correspondents will be happy to appear in his archive and will raise no objections. Also, I could be completely wrong since I have no legal training. Yet this is an issue that will come to the forefront as more of these online archives are established.