Hotmail replaces &reg with ® in the middle of a URL

Hi,

it seems there is an interesting feature that replaces all instances of &reg with the special "registered" character: ®.

So:

http://foo.com/bar?foo=bar&region=US

Becomes:

http://foo.com/bar?foo=bar®ion=US

Fun stuff is that it doesn't seem to be browser related because transferring the email keeps it the replacement, apparently.

Now, I'd like to question this:

- is Hotmail really altering the actual content of my email, or just the viewing?

- can Hotmail stop replacing these characters by default when not ending in ';'

- at the very least, can Hotmail stop doing that in the middle of a URL? that shouldn't be too hard and would most certainly fix the issue.

Thanks!