Roland Perry - "is an ISP a 'Person'?"

[Dave Howe]

Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> What is memiming?
A typo - I meant "demiming"
>
> If you _can_ use content, to eg feed a scanner, it's available to
> you. To use. For interception to occur, you don't have to have read
> it, you don't even have to have used it, it just has to be available
> for you to use.
that is an awkward distinction to make - how do you distinguish between the
actions of sendmail routinely spooling or forwarding messages according to
its program, and sendmail filtering messages though a virus scanner before
forwarding/spooling?

> If content has been made available to you by one of the actions in
> ss.2(2), interception has occurred (bar a few exceptions).
At what point is content "made available to you" though?
a "MTA plugin" virus scanner or demimer doesn't create its own storage area
or single out messages from the stream on its own; instead it acts as a
single module "in stream" of the normal transmission of messages, modifying
those messages but not diverting them anywhere;  an owner couldn't gain
access to them without being root and peering into areas normally reserved
for the mail system itself.

> You can't usually scan without content being available to you, to use
> in the scan, or without one of those actions occurring. Scanning is
> therefore interception (again, bar a few exceptions).
surely the distinction is - does scanning (by software) "make the content
available" to a person or persons? or does this only happen if that software
singles out messages (quarantine) for manual processing later?

> In the cases of popmail, webmail, and spooling, email is in the PCSP's
> system as part of the normal operation of the communications system,
> and there is no interception. No modification "as to..." has happened.
for virus scanning, the mail is *still* in the same system as part of its
normal operation; if you treat the system as a black box, mail goes in one
side and departs the other, exactly as required. why does it modifying that
email *in passing* count as "making it available" to the owner of the box?