Ah, so that's why Germany and Japan have such an easy trading relationship.

Yes, finally someone else with whom to fax.

Anyone here who has written a fax gateway (receive TIFF of fax, do OCR, save somewhere and convert to PDF)?

raises hand

(fax is alive and well in Switzerland)

This boggles the mind on the cultural-legal implications in fax-centric countries of doing:

Fax to TIFF to OCR to PDF to internet transfer to TIFF to fax

But anyone still requiring fax would probably just be happy "it came out of a fax machine / software."

Fax is a secure channel, apparently, which of course is complete horseshit. It uses the phone network, which is only marginally better than the internet. Many know that email headers can be faked, but not so many know that phone numbers can, too.

Legally I guess this becomes the problem of the party that introduces the intermediate stages. The other party doesn't need to care.

hylafax?

The joke about the Merkel government was that if the French state is founded on the concept of 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité', the German state is founded on 'Stabilität, Stabilität, Stabilität' even in the face of badly needed change.