RE: Content Sniffing impact on HTTPbis - #155

Mark Nottingham wrote:
> The text in question is in p3 section 3.2.1:
> > If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field,
> > the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of
> > its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify
> > the resource. If the media type remains unknown, the recipient
> > SHOULD treat it as type "application/octet-stream".

"If and only if...MAY..." is not the same as "MUST NOT ... if not". That is,
the above statement doesn't forbid an implementation from doing content
sniffing since it isn't a MUST NOT requirement.

> 1) remove the text "If and only if the media type is not given by a
> Content-Type field", leaving the specification of the sniffing
> algorithm to a separate document (possibly with some further
> constraints to discourage sniffing unless it's controlled, but this
> would be necessarily vague), or

+1. How applications interpret content is not really relevant as far as the
protocol is concerned. The HTTP specification should make it clear what
Content-Type represents and let applications decide whether (and how) to
make use of it.

- Brian