On Tue, 9 Mar 2010, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> It is NOT "illegal" to break a contract.
It's called 'fraud'. Look it up.
No, sorry, it's NOT fraud. Fraud requires proving an intentional
misrepresentation.
Well duh. Did you think I meant something else?
Breaking a contract does not imply that the
contract was entered into with an intent to break it.
But sending back an SMTP 'delivered' response when the mail was diverted
to a spam folder could be PERCEIVED as misrepresentation (and therefore
fraud, because clearly the decision to divert is based in policies
established long before the implicit 'contract' of accepting a mail).
But again, I stress this is only true for the STUPID USER who does not
understand that the spam folder is an alternate form of delivery TO THEM.
My responsibility is complete (and legal) when that mail is delivered to
either location.
It's all about the hassle and misperceptions. The fewer times I have to
explain to users how their mail 'disappeared', the easier my life.... :)
And please remember that my entire context was only to stress that my weak
definition of 'something illegal' was in CONTRAST to the utterly
ridiculous notion that rejecting a mail at SMTP DATA time had anything
illegal to it at all!
- C
