Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

[Piet Beertema <]

    	Well, if the present POP/IMAP protocols allow users to look at
    	headers without downloading the entire message,
    They do. In fact, POP3 forces you to take all the headers;
    it doesn't have any "some only" option.
But having to take all of the *headers* is not the same
as having to take all of the *message*.
    
    	use another non-mandatory header to more specifically say what
	kind of UCE they're sending - e.g. "X-UCE-Type:" or "X-UCE-Keywords:"
    I think just:
    X-UCE: keywords
    would suffice
Agreed.
    a lack of keywords means "unclassified", and a lack of the
    header means "not UCE".
That's a dangerous approach, especially with MickeySoft
practices: there's a fair chance that, once X-UCE exists,
their mailers will add it by default, leaving it up to
the user to fill in the details (in the best case leaving
the user a choice of categories). Therefore a lack of
keywords should denote "no UCE", and the default could
be "any" or some such; this approach however could be
dangerous for innocent users and novices, who will see
their serious messages discarded as spam... Because of
this risk, we have to very carefully consider what to
make the default and how to deal with keywordless X-UCE
lines, because UCE should be *discarded*, never bounced.
And here we hit upon another issue: when a "meaningful"
X-UCE is present, the receiving mailer should *not*
bounce the message, even if the recipient is unknown.


	Piet