Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

[Piet Beertema <]

    	    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 ?
It would - or at least could - harm *lots* of users.
    
    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 ?
Adding an X-UCE header line by default would not be
a violation of the standard, yet hit a lot of users.
And very hard indeed, as their mail would vanish
rather than be bounced. Sure enough, you could blame
the software maker, but if it's that trivial, why
not devise a standard right from the start that can
cope with this sort of (potential) problems? It's
by no means a matter of "complication".

    	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 ?
Yes... *not* see, which is even worse for them.
    
    I suggest a *very* simple standard: an "X-UCE" header means
    "this is UCE".
A default of "X-UCE: no" is just as simple, but is
potentially far less harmful than "the presence of
X-UCE".

    Actually, even better would be to make it "This-is-UCE"
That would or could make it impossible to introduce
categories.


	Piet