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

[Peter Fairbrother]

Dave Howe wrote:

> 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?

Leaving RIPA aside for a minute, it's quite easy. The first is part of the
communications service, necessarily. The second, while perhaps part of the
service, is not necessary.

> 
>> 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.

The owner has made use of the content, in the scanner. If you can make use
of something, it is available to you to make use of, if nothing else.
> 
>> 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;

No. It's in a diferent system than the system it would be in if the scanning
didn't occur. The system has been modified.



-- Peter Fairbrother