In his Web log, Michael Froomkin, a law professor talked about the license terms for `Gmail':
This reminded me of the long standing convention for HTML. It opposes this license.
HTML is WYSOHIFAYD, What You See Or Hear Is Formatted As You Decide to hear or see. HTML is designed so the reader or listener can decide what format to see or hear. The looks or sounds vary; but the content remains.
On the other hand, for electronic mail, the standard, international convention is that it is WYSIWYCS, What You See Is What Your Correspondent Sent. Mail programs are not supposed to change anything. The idea is that the message accurately reflects the intentions of the sender.
As a practical matter, this means that electronic mail is supposed to be similar to the typewritten letters of the past rather than to hand written letters, which are more expressive. You can argue that this characteristic makes for a poor convention. Its advantage, as far as I can see, is that any one, even someone remote or frugal or suffering a bad connection, can send and receive email. It does not waste their or their sponsors' resources and messages can be displayed equally well by every email program. It means that people in first world countries do not waste resources of third world countries. The convention means that electronic mail is universal.
Of course, the permanently blind, or the growing number of the situationally blind, such as those who listen to their email while driving, do not see their electronic mail. They listen to it, using Emacspeak. So its reproduction is not exactly what your correspondent sent, but the reproduction will correspond.
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