[Mimedefang] Rewarding plaintext

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Friday, October 17, 2003 9:18 AM -0700 David Meissner
<DavidM at instantservice.com> wrote:

> On the other hand, forcing everyone to use
> plain text forever will restrict future innovation. And, spammers will
> probably adapt to HTML blocking as they have to other detection methods, so
> the benefits may not last too long.

I have no desire to block HTML, or any other attachment type (unless it's
malware or spam). My desire is technical: Create a "first class" mail class at
the receiver that processes all plaintext before anything else, and treats
every other type as "cargo", to be processed at low priority and without
additional costly cycles. Don't let your spam load dictate your server
purchases.

This is somewhat like the social engineering we talked about a week or two ago
in which we'd charge extra for non-plaintext. In this case, the charge is not
money but CPU time (and the transit time that imposes). If you want to send
grandchild photos to grandma, they get dumped in the cheap bulk server and she
may not see them for a week. Same for HTML goofing off. If you want to send a
memo, and need to see it expedited, use plaintext.