So I read on Yahoo! News this morning that the FTC has adopted new rules for sexually explicit email. In general, this sounds like a great idea. Especially if it requires a change to the subject line so it is easy to filter.

However, one part of the article didn't make any sense:

Such information or images may still be present in a message but not initially viewable in a preview pane or upon first opening the E-mail.

Maybe I'm crazy - but isn't what you see in a preview pane or what gets displayed in an email the job of the email client, and not the email itself? Does this mean Eudora (I forget who owns that), Microsoft, and others have to patch their email clients to support this? What about people who read email using a text only program on Linux?

I sometimes wonder if the government has any geeks working for them. This kind of distinction is pretty obvious and has a direct impact on their rules.