The transmission and reception of final form documents (i.e. presented 
in a format that describes their final rendering) is an essential 
global
communications service.

Several protocols and services have been developed over the years to
facilitate document transmission, including the GSTN Fax service 
[ITU-T.30].  Within the IETF several protocols have been developed that
facilitate document transmission, including RFC 2305 and RFC 2532 
[Store
and Forward Internet Fax] and the Internet Print Protocol [IPP].

Problem Statement:

Each of these services has one or more severe limitations or 
restrictions that may not be suitable for all document transmissions.

Among those limitations that could be applied to one or more of the 
above services:

1. Limitations on Quality (resolution or color transmission)

2. Ability to repudiate request for receipt confirmation (MDN - DSN)

3. Lack of clear and unambiguous legal identification of sender and 
   recipient

4. Lack of ability to adequately determine the success or failure of a
   document transmission during processing

5. Inability to establish reliable knowledge or negotiation of 
recipient
   capabilities

6. Inability to satisfy legal as well as general custom and practice 
for
   document transmission technologies, as typically applied to GSTN 
Fax.

7. Inability to establish transaction security, authenticity and
   confidentiality of document transmission

Work Group Objectives:

The purpose of the work group will be to investigate current work 
within
the IETF and identify protocols, procedures and policies that can 
satisfy the requirements for reliable document transmission with a high 
degree of fidelity and reliability.

Essential attributes for Quality Document Delivery Services include:

Timely Delivery.

Transaction Security, Authenticity and Confidentiality.

High quality output with sender control of presentation detail

Legal identity exchange.

Document format selection based on confirmed capabilities of sender 
and/or receiver.

Proof of Delivery (Receipt Notification).

Study will be given to the requirements of 3rd party document delivery
service providers.

The WG will not submit any new protocols only extensions or 
augmentations to existing or proposed Standards Track protocols.

Proposed solutions:

Proposed solutions should not impose undue burdens on implementers in 
order that the protocol should be available on a wide variety of 
devices 
and systems.

The working group will closely coordinate its activities with other 
IETF
Work Groups, including the Internet Print Protocol working group [IPP] 
and the Internet Fax working group [FAX] as well other document 
transmission related standards bodies and related work groups, notably 
the ITU-T Study Group 8. The group will take note of other areas and 
Work Groups within the IETF that may have direct bearing on reliable 
document delivery.

Relevant areas include:

-  Security, Authentication and Encryption (TLS, etc)

-  Sender Identification (vCard)

-  RFC 2301 File Formats

-  Digital Signatures and Certificates

-  RESCAP

-  IMPP

-  ENUM


Particular emphasis will be taken to design protocol elements that 
would
likely reduce the possibility of document "spaming" as well as other 
forms of denial and abuse of service.