Richard Clayton wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> In message <200702071214.04870@???>, Magnus Holmgren
> <holmgren@???> writes
>
>> The right way to add text to a signed and/or encrypted mail would, I believe,
>> be by adding a new MIME part, just like Mailman does. The disclaimer won't be
>> signed or encrypted, of course, but then again it doesn't really contain any
>> information.
>
> Not all signed/encrypted email is MIME (such as this email, at least
> when it left here) !
>
> So you need to understand more than one signing format to have a chance
> of getting things correct
>
> Also, as someone who regularly signs their email, I am very used to
> people with less capable email clients (such as some of those made in
> the Pacific Northwest of the USA) asking me why I keep sending extra
> attachments with funny characters in... viz: you cannot assume that
> every client will properly cope with multiple attachments in a good way
>
> So the proper answer is that the text should be put there by the
> originating email systems. If you want to second-guess the need for the
> disclaimer (or company info -- which is only needed in the UK on
> "business email"... and I really don't think this email is "business"
> (though it's hardly "pleasure" either)) then by all means do a check for
> it as the mail passes by... simple, elegant and avoids a lot of scope
> for making emails unreadable at the far end :(
>
> Nigel was asking about the legality of altering email. IANAL [though I
> try to keep up to date on these things], but I strongly suspect that the
> underlying issue that people are vaguely remembering is the ECommerce
> Directive notion of "mere conduit".
>
> ISPs that alter email passing through their systems lose this statutory
> defence (although they could well still have many other defences against
> liability). However, "mere conduit" would not be an issue for a
> corporate email system -- and I cannot see that their liability for an
> email changes one way or the other by an automated addition of text (or
> mangling of headers or whatever).
>
> - --
> richard Richard Clayton
Thank you, Richard!
I am glad I waited before posting my 'IANAL' detailed two-pager ith a hundred
years and more of common-carrier 'precedent' as it might have been interpreted
as 'I'm Anal'.
;-)
Your post is as definitive - and concise - as I believe it can get for smtp.
Best,
Bill
