For me, a key benefit of C2PA is that recipients can independently inspect and validate the provenance of the actual asset. They can check signatures and content bindings, examine the recorded editing history, and inspect ingredients or thumbnails where these are included. This does not eliminate the need to assess the signer’s trustworthiness, but it means we do not have to rely solely on the publishing server’s interpretation.

When only a server-generated summary remains, that capability is lost. We receive a value such as Trusted, but cannot independently examine the evidence behind it or explore the provenance history that was present in the original. I understand that the proposal also allows signed derivatives. My concern is specifically about implementations that distribute neither a verifiable derivative nor an accessible signed original.

There is also an author-choice aspect here. A photographer may deliberately export an image with Content Credentials because they want to share its provenance. Where their editing software provides disclosure controls, they may already have made choices about which information to include. I would like platforms to respect that intention and offer preservation as an explicit option, with a clear warning about any personal metadata that will also be retained.

Privacy protection is important, and export controls may not cover every piece of embedded metadata. However, I think the author should be able to make an informed choice to publish the signed original, rather than having its verifiable provenance automatically removed during processing.

I also agree with the concern about withdrawing consent: preserving an original does not guarantee that federated copies can later be deleted. That limitation should be clearly explained before publication.