Yes, we do hate stupid email disclaimers that much : they are a completely meaningless waste of electrons, they waste display real estate and they make proper quoting more awkward. And most of all they are unilateral clauses whose acceptation is most dubious.

Lerouge dug out an article by Russel Coker about striking back at worthless email disclaimers by configuring Postfix’s smtpd_banner in /etc/postfix/main.cf with the appropriate legalese of its own. Lerouge suggested that we do likewise and I jumped on the case and implemented it immediately…

Looking for something really outrageous and fit to point out how ridiculous those things are, I found inspiration at ReasonnablAgreement.com and modified it for my purposes…

So there you go :

13:52 jim@kivu ~% telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 kivu.grabeuh.com ESMTP (M Sexchange) – READ CAREFULLY. By transmitting email to this server you agree personally and on behalf of your employer or organization, to release the recipients from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (hereafter BOGUS AGREEMENTS) that the recipients have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to the recipients ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release the recipients from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer or organization.

So in case you wondered, here is proof : the humongous disclaimer from hell does fit into smtpd_banner’s limits !