Re: Intent to revive "expires" header from draft-ietf-mailext-new-fields-15

On 7/30/08 at 9:56 AM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:

>Even if we say  that mail transport and message stores MUST NOT 
>delete messages on the basis of this new field without recipient 
>consent, implementors of such products will have a hard time 
>resisting the temptation to add such a feature which seems obviously 
>useful to them.

So, I believe there is a saving grace here, and that we will be able 
to go ahead and use "Expires:" instead of 
"I-Dont-think-you-want-to-read-this-after:"...

If, e.g., Microsoft were to implement message deletion based on the 
"Expires:" header in, e.g., Exchange, they would immediately be sued 
or otherwise have their heads handed to them. The reason is that they 
will instantly cause companies to be in violation of all sorts of 
corporate compliance laws and discovery orders. They simply can't do 
this. The power of corporate money is much greater than user 
complaints. So I don't think the "risk of idiocy" profile for 
"Expires:" is nearly as bad as other features we've seen abused in 
the past.

Now, will some web mail folks who already have draconian mail 
deletion policies use "Expires:" to start deleting that mail 
preferentially? Maybe not, because they have better things to do than 
to write code to search for "Expires:" and would rather just delete 
after some hard date. If they do, then as a user, I think I'd prefer 
them to preferentially delete "expired" messages rather than others.

Either way, I think the damage potential here is minimal, and the 
gain, though also small, is reasonable for folks who want to use it.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102