Okay but why is Expires: better than Expiry-Date:? I have the
impression that existing uses of Expires tend to do the wrong thing
whereas uses of Expiry-Date tend to do the right thing or at least be
benign.
Sent from my iPod
On Jul 30, 2008, at 11:33 AM, Pete Resnick <presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com>
wrote:
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