Fans created fan content and sent it addressed to voice actor David Wald to Crunchyroll. Instead of forwarding, they opened the package and put the stuff on a freebies table for employees to take.
Dear friends: if you sent me anything care of Funimation or Crunchyroll in the last 5 years, I apologize, I didn’t get it. I learned yesterday that @Crunchyroll opened my private mail, threw away your letters, and passed out any included items to their staff.
Dear fellow workers at @Crunchyroll - below is a photo of the complete contents of one of the packages addressed to me that was opened and distributed to employees. If you ended up in possession of any of it, I would very much like it returned to me.
According to his tweets, he received two items that were still on the freebies table.
A follow-up tweet of his voices further, broader dissatisfaction:
Me, thinking: “…Jeez, it’s a good thing I didn’t tell them about the gay discrimination. Or the medical discrimination. Or the union busting. Or the continuous culture of fear. Or the hostile workplace environment, or…”
I can't navigate or see Twitter unfortunately, but apparently; The disappointed fans commented as well. And other voice actors also vented some of their frustrations in interacting with Crunchyroll.
uhhh... I'm not a lawyer but I do know that opening someone's private mail is a crime (in Canada) and after searching it up I already found 2 sources (after a 2 second search) so far that also states the same in the US
https://businessanywhere.io/is-it-illegal-to-open-someone-elses-mail/
https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-the-federal-law-for-opening-mail-not-addressed-to-you/
The fact that the contents of the mail were also pilfered and redistributed without the knowledge and/or consent of the recipient might mean that Crunchyroll/the user in question might have committed a felony crime
Legally it might be a bit more complicated than that. The address on the mail would've been crunchyroll's office, and it seems like businesses are allowed to open any mail that is addressed (as in having the matching address) to them regardless of whose name is on it.
It's actually common practice to inspect contents for foul play before forwarding, especially now with Airtags.
ahh yeah I agree I can see how that would complicate things.
Although if I were in the situation of dealing with the company's mail and I saw that it was addressed to both the company and a specific recipient I'd probably ask the recipient to open and confirm the contents first to avoid any legal and ethical issues
Yeah, for sure. Regardless of legality, it was pretty clearly unethical.
The video I linked went into that as well. The clickbait title says it's a federal crime. Later on, when they actually go into it, they show and quote the law, and given that the package was sent to Crunchyroll, despite being addressed to a person at Crunchyroll, may be fine and depends on how the court interprets it.
Ah thank you for pointing out the video!🤗, I read the article and assumed the other links were just twitter posts