My understanding is that a post BOX has to be a design acceptable to the USPS; and that no one else can put things INTO it. This is a pretty narrow restriction; door slots can be used by anyone for anything, and many postboxes either share a support post with a newspaper delivery tube or have an external rack for stuffing newspapers, etc. Back about 20 years ago, some company (FedEx, UPS????) tried to get into the first class mail delivery business, and they dealt with this by putting mail in a plastic bag and hanging it on the doorknob. Where I live (*small* town in New England), FedEx and UPS regularly leave packages unattended; either by the front door, the back door, or in the garage (this is a very low crime area). Around 1979, when the existence of email was just beginning to penetrate (there where only a few hundred thousand people on the Arpanet), there was considerable debate over the legality of email. Since access to Arpanet was theoretically only for people working on Federally funded projects, it was widely thought that it should only be used for project related work, and any personal mail was a misuse of government funds. Columbia University (where I was working at the time) allowed unlimited internal use, but had tinkered their mail client to ignore addresses to off-campus addresses. I think my very first hack involved defeating this restriction. About the same time, I remember that the Postal Carriers Union realized (quite correctly) that email was a threat to their civil service jobs, and came out with a statement to the effect of 'We don't quite understand what this thing is, but the USPS owns it." They wanted to require that email be received only at Post Offices, where it would be printed, stamped, and delivered (by one of their members) along with the rest of the mail. Peter Trei ptrei@securitydynamics.com
---------- From: Brian B. Riley[SMTP:brianbr@together.net]
Maybe they are confusing an electronic mailbox with a snailmail box ... the USPS has always contended that they (the USPS) "own" your mailbox and use that criterion to prosecute people who drive around putting things
like circulars etc in mailboxes. Maybe they we on a role thinking that if they got into the e-mail business they would 'own' that piece of your hard drive so to speak.