It is also very easy to demonstrate that email is not a very reliable system and thus you can not depend on it being delivered. Mostly because of all the spam and antivirus systems in place. You get the "delivered" notification but that only says it has been accepted by the mailserver. It does not mention anything about what happens after it has been filtered. It may have been deleted without the user read it. You can find this in the logs. The same logs can also be used to show that no email has been received (in case of a mitm attack for example).
Why isn't acceptance by the mail server good enough? If the recipient doesn't have proper policies in place for checking its spam, or its systems don't effectively relay the information in a timely fashion, that is the recipient's problem. It's like the analogy of effecting service of a document by leaving the document with someone over the age of sixteen at the recipient's workplace (valid here anyway) - if the employee doesn't pass the document to the employer recipient that's the employer's problem. The mail server stands in the same place as the employee: there's an expectation the employee will have been trained to know what to do, or will make simple enquiries. Wilful blindness is not a valid excuse, nor is an aggressive spam filter set to repel emails from all unknown sources that is never checked (as an example).
No it absolutely does not because clients can be setup to sent such a receipt automatically or somebody can choose not to sent it at all. You do have to have a client that actually supports it which aren't many.
Again - that's the recipient's problem. Secondly, are you saying that Outlook 2003 and 2007 for Windows (which do support it) aren't commonplace installations?
In most countries it is enough to show the email has been delivered. It is up to the other party to show logs of the mailserver that tells otherwise (there are countries where you have to archive all incoming email by law). However, in both cases we are talking plain text files that can be altered quite easily. It is entirely up to the judge to guess who's right, who's wrong and if the given logs can be even accepted as evidence. The same applies to chat logs and other kind of logs.
The logs are certainly relevant (and can be very definitive, even, when the questions are put to the test in Court) but send and receipts provide entirely adequate proof to establish the presumption that the document was received or read by someone with access to the recipient's account. Let's not forget about the millions of emails sent each day from law firms (or any other business wanting some degree of certainty about these matters) that don't require proof of effective "personal service". My example of a simple emailing sending some medical reports as an attachment is but one.
No it isn't. There is absolutely no need for such a feature because in most countries the log files are enough. In most countries you also need much more evidence than just logs and emails. You need to build up a convincing case and for that you use various sorts of evidence.
Obviously what the recipient then does after the email is alleged to have been received and/or read is relevant if it is in serious doubt (after send, read receipts and logs have been considered), but at the end of the day we are talking about what is often a legal non-issue (receipt and the reading of an email). The OP and I just want read and send receipts utilised in OS X Mail and Outlook 2012 FFS. Not everyone wants to read and understand message headers and logs.
There is another problem in this case. Anybody can sent you an email and email systems can be hacked. How does the recipient know that YOU are actually the person that sent the email? They don't. For that people use certificates or pgp/gpg to sign the email with a unique signature.
As a matter of evidence you the sender know you sent it and you can prove it. Your example seems to me to be an excuse that a recipient might give to evade service. "I didn't know that email was really from the person who it purported to be from so I ignored it" shouldn't be a valid excuse.
In the Netherlands something like that will only be allowed if that is the only way of reaching that person. If it isn't than using that doesn't count.
Same here. The exception here the law allows is called substituted service, and it is permitted when the recipient is evading service or cannot be found.
Why? Because it isn't reliable. Same goes for other digital things like email, twitter, hyves (Dutch Facebook competitor), etc. There has been 1 case where they were allowed that and it was a highly debated decision throughout lawyers and judges in the entire country.
It's not reliable because it is difficult to prove that the person has actually had notice of the communication. But in such cases the law has pushed the burden onto the intended recipient for good reason, often because they have been evading service, won't attend Court, and have been known to "frequent that address".
Court orders are usually sent via snail mail and you have to sign for it. Which immediately shows the difference between read receipts and the old way: the old way uses actual unique signatures whereas the read receipts are only digital messages without any uniqueness to it. There is no way of telling that somebody knowingly sent it and who that person was (even if it was a person). Since you have to proof the other person has gotten the court order most will use the old way because it simply is the best way (the evidence is stronger). I believe this is how it works in most countries.
Same here, but see my comments above re evading service. Also, the recipient does not have to sign for a document for it to be proven as "served". Documents are often served upon people by leaving it on the ground in their presence, leaving it with someone else residing at the same address or with an employee at the same workplace, or upon people who flat out will not cooperate. All of these situations make signatures (unique or otherwise) irrelevant, and the law permits service in those circumstances. The internet shouldn't be any different, and the fortification of existing standards (rather than the erosion of them) should occur IMHO.
I hope you sent it encrypted. In the Netherlands this is mandatory as medical records fall under the privacy law. If you sent them plain text then you'd be violating that privacy law. You definitely want to have encryption in that picture as well. Medical records are very sensitive data which can harm an individual for a life time.
Not illegal here to not encrypt. I agree it is a good idea to do so.
It is not likely that many of the other 4850+ people who read this thread want to create presumptions like you do. There is no evidence for that. The only thing there is, is the fact that 4850+ people read this thread. There is no indication why they did so nor is there anything that will tell this in the future. What you are doing here is making assumptions and those are the mother of all screw ups. From my own experience as a sysadmin I know that quite a lot of people are not known to read receipts at all. They have no idea what they are or how to use them (which means that you can't tell if something was a mistake or not). It is quite possible that a lot of people came to this thread because they wanted to know what "read receipts" are. Could be something else that drew them here. I just don't know.
How is *not* likely that "many" do? What's the thread topic again?
By the way, try googling the subject. The people wanting the facility seem to far outweigh those who do not.
Let's not forget that this site isn't USA-only. There are many nationalities here. Email is also not limited to the USA, it is used worldwide and thus manufacturers of email servers and clients have to aim at audiences around the world. If in most countries in the world there is no sense in having a certain feature it will be much easier not to implement them.
See my comments about Outlook 2003 and 2007 above, although that wasn't why I said what I said. The quote you have taken from my post was originally directed at MisterMe, who was unnecessarily rude and arrogant.
Bottom line is that Outlook 2011 and OS X Mail are lacking a basic feature that is no doubt used by *many* users around the world who also might happen to use Outlook 2003 and 2007. Different application I know, but why would Apple implement delivery receipts in Messages in OS X Mountain Lion, but not see fit to do so for its flagship email product? Answer probably is that it can control the standards on Messages, but why wouldn't you adopt what is already out there with OS X Mail (same goes for Microsoft and Outlook 2011).
PS - I'm not a Windows fanboi or a troll - just someone who misses a feature I use every day in my work, which feature would also allow me to use the Outlook 2011 and/or OS X Mail/Calendar suites at work instead of their Windows counterparts.