John Levine wrote: > >>The issue is that an MTA operated by an ISP is a telecommunications >>provider and subject to the telecommunication secrecy requirements >>based on EU directive 2002/58/EC. > > By that theory, spam filtering would be illegal, too, yet all the > German ISPs I know manage to do it. I agree with Dave Crocker, that discussing legal issues on IETF mailing lists usually doesn't work well at all. I would really prefer to stop this particular sub-discussion here. The problem with your "by that theory" is that this legal theory doesn't work the way you think it does. An anti-spam filtering scheme that happens before right before an EMail is delivered into a personal mailbox, and which happens on a purely opt-in basis by each individual EMail receipient is compatible with the EU laws. The EMail recipient as specified by the EMail sender is a rightful participant of the communication, and the processing happens "at the communication endpoint", and not "in transit". The receipient is allowed to decide which data to "receive" and which data to ignore or delete, and the receipient is also allowed to voluntarily(!!) outsource spam filtering or pre-sorting to his Mail provider. Maybe a brief description of a decision from the German Federal Labour court from 2009 helps understanding (1 AZR 515/08 from 20-Jan-2009). A labour union sent (unsolicited) EMail advertisements to employees at their work Email accounts, and the employer sued them to stop sending such EMails to work email accounts of employees. The German Federal Court (the highest appelate court on that matter) ruled, that the employer must tolerate such EMails. Only employees themselves, individually and voluntarily, can send "opt-out" requests for such EMails to unions, which the union will then have to respect. Since labour unions are privileged by the german constitution, they even enjoy a "cold call" privilege that is an exception to the cold call prohibition for other businesses. If an employer would try to filter out such union Emails by technical means, it will be a criminal offense, and no amount of contracts and contract clauses can make such action non-criminal. -Martin