Update on F-prot issue

[Alan Fiebig]

If you are comfortable with your rationalization, and care to take the risk of possibly having to use such a defense in court, and feel it is an ethical position, then who am I to try and dissuade you? If the fact that the computer you are doing the scanning on received the files being scanned via the SMTP protocol, and the fact that the program handing off the files to be scanned is named 'MAILscanner', and the fact that the files are passed off the computer again using the SMTP protocol, if all those issues are irrelavant to you, then so be it.

I only know that I, personally, would not put my job and company in such a position.

This isn't an argument, only a position. Thanks for the opportunity to reply to your thoughts, but as I'm not on a soapbox on this, I'm not planning on making any further defense of my opinion.

-Alan

>I'm not a lawyer either and perhaps it's just wishful and naive thinking
>on my part but I disagree.  I do not think we "must" license the mail
>server version because we are not using the functionality that that
>product provides. I do agree that using the workstation version would be
>inappropriate.  From my perspective the file server version is the
>correct one.
>
>I don't need the functionality of the mail server version.  It includes
>software that decodes mail files and scans the attachments.  That's what
>you're paying for and I don't need it or have any intention of using
>it.  What I need is the file server version which scans files for
>multiple people.  Where the files come from is irrelevant.  They are
>still just files on a file server.
>
>What if my operation were like this.  All users are required to save
>their e-mail attachments to disk and put them on our file server.  We
>periodically scan the checked in files and notify the users that they
>are clean and can be safely used.  Should such an operation license the
>file server version or the mail server version?  How is using MS to
>automate the process any different?  Keep in mind that with MS I'm not
>scanning e-mail attachments I'm just scanning files.  I wrote the
>software that decodes the attachments and puts them on the file server
>(that's a rhetorical I which really means Julian :) ) and that has
>nothing to do with the virus scanning vendor.  In this case I'm just
>using their software to scan files on my file server.
>
>What's wrong with my thinking on this?
>
>--
>Richard Lynch <rich at mail.wvnet.edu>