Re: Legal Requirements?

On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 02:45:04PM -0800, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
> 
> Instead giving rhetorical questions, state your requirement.

Well, this is not really productive.

Developing the next generation of a protocol is more than just
collecting some requirements. You can't expect everyone to 
have a finished list of requirements just after a few days.


I'm not so far to give precise requirements yet, but as a european
I have some questions:

- What about privacy? I what way would a protocol infringe the 
  sender's or recipient's privacy?

- What about anonymous or pseudonymous mails or mailboxes? Do we 
  need to find a way to make this possible while still blocking
  forgery and spam?

- Trackability is not self-evident. It could be a requirement that
  mail is untrackable. Anonymous remailers have tradition in europe.



So this is far from being as simple as just "state your
requirements". 

Keep in mind that this protocol is not intended to be in use
in the USA only. Internet protocol development often suffers from 
a pure americocentric point of view. European countries have laws
protecting privacy. If a new protocol turns out to be incompatible 
with such laws it will have a sudden death.

regards
Hadmut