I'm probably extremely naive when it comes to law... so I don't know if there
are "laws" or not...
>I'm not aware of any law establishing the legality of fax documents --
>I believe it is only case law, no? If so, a legal challenge would
>be needed to establish a similar precedent.
but there are regulations such as the State of California "Rules of Court" (see
rule 2003 item 6) adopted March 1992.
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/rules/1998/titlefive/titlefive.pdf which refers to
a "transmission record" printed by the SENDING device and containing fax number
of receiving machine, number of pages sent and transmission time and date.
Also, from FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION PUBLIC NOTICE (31291 / DA 92-1716)
January 11, 1993
http://www.faximum.com/faqs/fax.questions#Q.11
FCC rules require that each transmission to a telephone facsimile machine must
clearly contain, in a margin at the top or bottom of each transmitted
page or on the first page of the transmission, (1) the date and time the
transmission is sent (2) the identity of the sender and (3) the telephone
number of the sender or of the sending machine. All telephone facsimile
machines manufactured on or after December 20, 1992 must have the capacity
to clearly mark such identifying information on the first page or on each page
of the transmission.
While not meant to represent an exhaustive study, these two (laws, regulations,
rules...? whatever)... clearly place requirement for "timestamping" on the
'generator", not the receiver. Note, there are margin requirements placed on
the end device, however.
I agree with trying to follow today's fax paradigm wherever appropriate.
Harry Lewis - IBM Printing Systems