Getting .doc attachments and tired of it

So this semester I have been receiving a number of .doc email attachments from people, mostly mass mailings from university faculty. Tired of it, I created a rule in my email program to automatically send the following out:


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Autoresponse from (Edit: Address removed. It's never a good idea to post your email address like that)

You are receiving this as an automated response because you have sent an MS Word document as an attachment to this address. If you have previously gained permission from the owner of this address to send the Word document you may disregard this automated response.
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Sending MS Word attachments is considered to be bad etiquette when using email. This auto-response is a request that you cease sending Word documents unless you have first obtained permission. FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY RESULT IN YOUR ADDRESS BEING BLOCKED! There are several reasons for this.

First off not everyone owns a copy of MS Word. Word is a rather expensive program and not everyone uses Windows or Macs. Even if they do, Microsoft often changes their file formats rendering older versions incompatible with newer formats.

Second, if a recipient of your attachment does have a compatible copy there is no reason why they should start Word to read something that could have been pasted into the body of the email itself. Sometimes documents need special formatting. More often than not this is the case to simply read the contained information.

Also there are security reasons for not sending Word attachments. Word documents have been used to harbor viruses. Also, there is a feature in Word that tracks the development of a document. Unless you have deleted this information someone can be made aware of information you may not want them to know.

Thank you for your understanding.

For more information and for alternatives see the following:
http://www.georgedillon.com/web/netiquette.shtml
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html
http://www.ece.uci.edu/~chou/nodoc.html

(Edit: I hope the message doesn't sound rude or stuck up as it has already gone out to some people. What do you think?)