[avianlyric]

I find this a little ironic

> that email is providing something similar to a "paper trail"

because paper doesn’t provide non-repudiation and never has done.

The whole point of a “paper trail” is the “trail” bit, as it provides providence of a sequence of actions or communications that logically fit together. Hopefully providing evidence for your side of a dispute.

There’s no need for email to be non-repudiatable to achieve this. In fact I serious doubt a court would care if an email is DKIM signed. Very rarely are disputes so simple and straightforward that proving a single email was sent is enough to produce an outcome.

In short DKIM non-repudiation by default gives up everyones privacy, to protect a tiny group of individuals engaged in extra edge case disputes, where the entire outcome of the disputes hangs on the validity of a single email.