> Not having email addresses in the ccTLD is not 'broken', unless whois
> information is required to have contact email addresses.  Who defines
> this requirement?

When it comes to getting email into my machines, I do.

I don't know whether there's any spec requiring it.  I've never
bothered searching; I am not willing to accept mail from any domain
which I cannot contact by email.  While there doubtless are a lot of
.de and .uk domains which are contactable, unless I have some way to
find that contact info, it might as well not exist.

> It is instead you that is shooting the messenger.  Very few people
> with .de or .uk domains could possibly change the policy of their
> ccTLD managers!

Certainly nobody else can!  If you can suggest a better way to get
their policies fixed than pressure from their constituency, I'm all
ears.  (Actually, I think the best way would be for the IANA to get off
their thumbs on the subject and impose it from above.  Given how much
authority is delegated that way, some responsibility needs to be
delegated along with it.  But that seems even less likely to me than
pressure from below effecting that change.)

> Now if your SMTP server rejected HTML only emails, that might be a
> different matter...

It does, actually.  Or at least it's suppsoed to.  If you find it's
not, please let me know so I can fix it!  Oops, there I go again,
calling something broken without RFC backing...okay, please let me know
so I can change it.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B