Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

["Clive D.W. Feather" <]

Piet Beertema said:
>     	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*.

Agreed - I made the comment because somone was concerned that you might not
be able to get at the header when using POP

>     X-UCE: keywords
[...]
>     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).

Why is that a bad thing ?

If MickeySoft can't manage to design an email program that conforms to a
very simple standard, why the hell should we complicate the standard ?

> 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.

See ?

I suggest a *very* simple standard: an "X-UCE" header means "this is UCE".

Actually, even better would be to make it "This-is-UCE" and get it into
DRUMS before they freeze the standard.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather       | Email: clive@localhost   | Tel: +44 1733 705000
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