Re: Email messages: How large is too large?

["Dick St.Peters" <stpeters at NetHeaven.com>]

> Customers are generally much happier when you give them what they ask for
> instead of forcing them to use something else; if people want to be able to
> mail full DVDs to each other, it's our job to determine how to make that
> technically feasible and (hopefully) efficient.

Communication has the unusual property of having two users, and sender
and recipient don't always agree on what they want.  I for one think
it is *not* the ietf's job to continue making it ever easier to send
what recipients do not want.  The recipients' wishes deserve respect,
and the inability of email (as it exists today) to take them into
account is a major flaw.

My first posting in this thread observed that I had imposed our 5 MB
limit on email message size because someone sent a 100 MB email to one
of our dialup users.  A one-size-fits-all limit is a rather blunt
instrument for protecting users, and it occasionally gets in the way
of things users legitimately want to transfer.  It's a balancing act
with no happy alternative.

--
Dick St.Peters, stpeters at NetHeaven.com 
Gatekeeper, NetHeaven, Saratoga Springs, NY
Saratoga/Albany/Amsterdam/BoltonLanding/Cobleskill/Greenwich/
GlensFalls/LakePlacid/NorthCreek/Plattsburgh/...
    Oldest Internet service based in the Adirondack-Albany region