Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

[Piet Beertema <]

    I think I hear you saying that all mail must carry a label and that
    all mail without it should be discarded; non-spam is labeled as:
        X-UCE: No
    I do hope I'm wrong.
You're wrong, so your hope is right. ;-)
I was referring to practices of software makers that
don't allow users to add header lines and because of
that put in certain header lines by default. Then I
wouldn't mind an X-UCE line to be added by default,
provided it has a default category field defined to
stand for "no UCE". I couldn't care less whether this
an empty X-UCE line or "X-UCE: No" denotes this. And
of course a mail without an X-UCE line should *never*
be discarded.
    
    Then I'm 100% convinced that spammers will add exactly that, if so
    required - hell, if they invent or steal From-addresses they'll be
    prepared to do anything to get their junk out to everyone.
Please don't mix up things. I've said very clear that
I don't expect mechanisms like an X-UCE header line
(and/or an SMTP conversation counterpart) to solve
the spam problem. But I expect it to be a mechanism
that can separate "unwanted UCE" from "wanted UCE";
and I don't expect that can be accomplished without
a [meaningful] category field in the X-UCE line.


	Piet