[imp] Ability to send “Copy Protected” mail

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting azurIt <azurit at pobox.sk>:

>> Quoting Andy Dorman <adorman at ironicdesign.com>:
>>
>>> I did a bit of searching and did not find anything discussing any
>>> open IRM standards that could be used by Horde or any other open
>>> source application.  But if such standards exist, I would hope we,
>>> the horde community, could eventually expand the system to be able
>>> to offer it.
>>
>> This is extremely unlikely to ever happen in IMP.  For about a billion
>> different reasons.
>
>
> Name the one thousand please.

This is *IMPOSSIBLE* to do via what we call "e-mail" (as defined by  
RFC 822, et seq.).  IMP as an RFC compliant e-mail MUA.  There is  
absolutely no way you can make e-mail copy protected using RFC 822 and  
have it interoperate with other MUAs that exist. (FWIW: Microsoft  
Outlook is NOT an RFC 822 compliant MUA.  It doesn't pretend to be.   
And Microsoft surely doesn't want it to be either).

Not to mention "copy protected" email is about the stupidest thing  
I've ever heard.  That's like trying to "copy protect" music files.   
<sarcasm>We all see how well that turned out.</sarcasm>

And as someone pointed out - the near ubiquitous prevalence in some  
areas of the world of mobile devices w/camera make this useless.  Not  
to mention having someone else walk over to your screen and read the  
text directly off the monitor.

The fact that some company out there has touted "copy protected  
e-mails" as a feature, and people actually believe them (and pay money  
for the product), is sad and telling and many different labels.

michael

___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]