>The interesting question: is it possible? Are the originating > mails stored so that the visible html can be repaired?
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer walk into a bar. The mathematician says "The raw mail exists even the old stuff is in offline cold storage. It can be matched by message-id against the HTML files and therefore it is possible. Q.E.D. Next problem, please?" . The physicist says, "I bet some of the decade old raw mail will be hard to find. And regeneration with URL preservation will take some serious hacking. Never been done before, tricky, and will require experimentation. But that's what we live for. Give me a small team of bright people and we can solve this problem in six months." The engineer says "Fredrich, do you have a specific URL in mind that you really want fixed? If so, I'll go spend 30 seconds and fix it by hand." The bartender looks at the three sorry customers and says, "Guys. Guys. Your mailto: links are still broken."
