4 ms·

It wouldn't surprise me, as faxes have some really weird legal exceptions carved out for them. For example, a faxed document is considered equivalent to the or

It wouldn't surprise me, as faxes have some really weird legal exceptions carved out for them. For example, a faxed document is considered equivalent to the original, but a scanned image is not. So even though a scanned image signed with your private key would be much more verifiable than a faxed copy that is transmitted without encryption and printed in a shared office, the law considers the fax as better than the scanned image. Which is all to say that it wouldn't surprise me if there were a legal requirement for an "original document", and if that requirement could only be met by physical mail or fax.

birdman3131 4y ago
At least in the medical world the security requirements of documents at rest is much higher than ones in transit. So you can't easily do efax because as soon as you have a queued pdf its at rest. (It can be done. just not easily.) So when everybody switches over to voip they usually try to keep the old fax machines going which faxing over voip is hit or miss.
themadturk 4y ago
Faxes are (or were originally) point-to-point electronic transmissions -- one fax machine dialing via POTS to another fax machine. In addition, the received fax, and the response sheet received by the sender, have time and date stamps that give legally-admissible proof of transmission and reception (and the sender will get a report of failure if that's the case as well). As a former fax server administrator (and troubleshooter/maintainer of everyday standalone fax machines), I think the point-to-point nature of traditional, non-Internet fax is the killer feature: no packets split up and resting on intermediate servers, etc. Fax servers have one or more individual fax modem cards, so the only network involved is before or after the actual fax transmission. I know fax is outdated. There are other effective technologies to replace it. But I've found myself more than once speaking up as a defender of the technology because, as originally used and codified into law, it serves a specific purpose and, as a bonus, if you know how to use a photocopier and a telephone it's drop-dead simple to use.
- caf 4y ago
  The underlying telephone network is in most cases packet-switched now anyway, so fax-to-fax is exactly as point-to-point as a TCP connection.
  - themadturk 4y ago
    Once again, law lags behind technology.

birdman3131 4y ago

At least in the medical world the security requirements of documents at rest is much higher than ones in transit. So you can't easily do efax because as soon as you have a queued pdf its at rest. (It can be done. just not easily.) So when everybody switches over to voip they usually try to keep the old fax machines going which faxing over voip is hit or miss.

themadturk 4y ago

Faxes are (or were originally) point-to-point electronic transmissions -- one fax machine dialing via POTS to another fax machine. In addition, the received fax, and the response sheet received by the sender, have time and date stamps that give legally-admissible proof of transmission and reception (and the sender will get a report of failure if that's the case as well). As a former fax server administrator (and troubleshooter/maintainer of everyday standalone fax machines), I think the point-to-point nature of traditional, non-Internet fax is the killer feature: no packets split up and resting on intermediate servers, etc. Fax servers have one or more individual fax modem cards, so the only network involved is before or after the actual fax transmission. I know fax is outdated. There are other effective technologies to replace it. But I've found myself more than once speaking up as a defender of the technology because, as originally used and codified into law, it serves a specific purpose and, as a bonus, if you know how to use a photocopier and a telephone it's drop-dead simple to use.

caf 4y ago
The underlying telephone network is in most cases packet-switched now anyway, so fax-to-fax is exactly as point-to-point as a TCP connection.
- themadturk 4y ago
  Once again, law lags behind technology.