[Symbiote]

The arguments for tar are --preserve-permissions and --touch (don't extract file modified time).

For unzip, -D skips restoration of timestamps.

For unrar, -ai ignores file attributes, -ts restores the modification time.

There are similar arguments for omitting these when creating the archive, they set the field to a default or specified value, or omit it entirely, depending on the format.

[Brian_K_White]

Those are user controls, to allow the user on one end to decide what to put into the container, and there are others to allow the user at the other side to decide what to take out of the container, not limits of the container.

The comment I'm replying to suggested that since one use case results in metadata that is meaningless or mis-matched between sender and receiver, the format itself should not even have the ability to record that metadata.