notary service requirements: suggested replacement for use-case 3.3

["Andreas U. Schmidt" <Andreas.U.Schmidt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

from the outset, I found the use-case 3.3 'certification of copy documents'
rather misleading. First, the creation of copies, which are to fully replace
the original seemed to me just a very special case of general document
transformations, which need not be restricted to simple format conversions.

Then the statement that 'transformation of one document format into another
can be achieved' was also doubtful. Given the complexity of some data 
formats
and the notorious 'what You see is what You sign' problem, I think that the
transformation of documents is a general process in which a notary 
service can
be at best a  helpful tool, and not a single instance which is 'able to 
attest that
one document contains the same information as another ... '

I therefore propose to change use case 3.3 as follows:

3.3 certification of transformed documents
If a party wants to transform a signed document into a
target document, a notary service can issue a signed transformation
seal asserting that a transformation has been correctly performed
and thereby ensuring the validity of the target document.
For this, the service needs to be provided with all necessary
information on original and target document, signatures and
transformation, and in some cases the application context.

The meaning of the term 'validity' of the target document
depends its desired application domain, an important example
being  a) its legal validity as a replacement of the original.
In this case, the goal of the transformation is that the
target document is held legally valid in all situations
in which the original was. Further examples: b) conversion
from a data format that has become obsolete (migration);
c) corrections and amendments in legal documents, e.g., contracts;
d) deletion of certain data within a document for reasons of
data protection or secrecy (e.g., patient names in medical
records that are to be processed by a third party).

In many cases, due to the complexity of real-world transformations,
the task of the notary service may consist solely in compiling and
applying the transfomration seal to the target document.