[cc-community] e-mail size (was: Re: ccSalon showcase event)

Claude Almansi (BW) claude.almansi at bluewin.ch
Tue Nov 21 04:12:57 EST 2006


Dear All

The Australian ccSalon is a great initiative, thanks for the info, Dr 
Coates.

However, why copy the full content, objects included, of 
http://creativecommons.org.au/ccsalon in an html / rich text e-mail? As 
a result, it weighed 1302 kb.

True, nowadays, the old "text-only no attachments" rule for 
mailing-lists may have been rendered obsolete, because if people have 
access to the internet at all, it is in most cases broadband access.

In most cases but not in all, though: there are places within 10 miles 
of Lugano where you can't get broadband, let alone in far less 
economically favored areas of the world.

And broadband is not the only factor. For instance my provider, 
bluewin.ch, limits storage capacity for e-mail accounts to 30 Mb if you 
have low-range broadband access, 10 Mb if you are on dial-up. I have the 
former, but can still travel, even with seldom possibilities to read my 
mail via the web, in spite of the fact that I often get over 200 
legitimate messages a day, mainly from mailing lists, because most of 
them are light. But when I am traveling, 25 e-mails over 1'300kb between 
times I can check my mails via the web would block my account. And even 
if I caught the mammoths in time, I would have to delete them or 
reforward them to myself without the attachments before deleting them.

And again, I am among the priviledged. Many people - including Cc 
activists - can *only* have web e-mail and can *only* use public access 
points, with no possibility to download it, as many public access point 
don't allow downloading to an external support (USB key for instance). 
Granted, web e-mail storage (say for Yahoo or Gmail) has dramatically 
increased in the last years. Nevertheless, should e-mails over 1'000 kb 
should become normal in mailing lists, this would create a problem.

So why not decide that if objects like PDFs or images are also available 
on the web, we give the URL for them in e-mails rather than attaching them?

Best

Claude Almansi


-- 
Claude Almansi
CH-6532 Castione
Gruppo Noi Media:
blog: http://noimedia.iobloggo.com
podcast:  http://noimedia.podspot.de
wiki: http://noimedia.wikispaces.com
link utili: http://del.icio.us/noimedia


More information about the cc-community mailing list