JSON Specification and usage of BOM/charset-encoding

Question

I\'ve been reading up on the RFC-4627 specification, and I\'ve come to interpretation:

When advertising a payload as application/json mime-type,

Answer 1

I think you are correct about question 1, due to Section 3 about the first two characters being ASCII and the unicode FAQ on BOMs, see "Q: How I should deal with BOMs?", answer part 3. Your emphasis on MUST may be a bit strong: the FAQ seems to imply SHOULD.

Don't know the answer to question 2.