Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

[Carl Moberg <]

At 16:26 15/01/99 +0100, Ragnar Lonn wrote:
>On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Piet Beertema wrote:
>
>> Wrong. The post office is the carrier, not the user.
>> And the post office doesn't tell you what to put (or
>> what not to put) into your message. Anyone trying to
>> tell/force you to put specific strings into your
>> message is in fact *telling you what to say*; and
>> that's an interference with your freedom of speech.
>> 
>
>Ok, I understand what you mean. This is uncharted territory I think, but
>mail messages are in fact altered in transit. The question then is, is the
>'Subject:' header in a fundamental way different from the other mail
>headers, meaning it can't be altered without affecting the sender's right
>to free speech?  I guess it could be considered an integral part of the
>message and because of that, protected, but on the other hand, what if the
>mail clients scanned for and removed any "[UCE]" in the Subject: headers
>before presenting the mail to the user?  It's really a matter of what is
>being presented to the user, isn't it, rather than what is actually there?

 This would be the worst case of overloading I've ever heard
 of, and yes, the "Subject:" should definitely be considered
 an integral part of the content and should therefore should
 not be used for any form of tagging, even if it's transparent
 to the end user.

Regards,
-- carl
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Carl Moberg, TeliaNet               voice: +46-8-456 7274        
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