Re: Legality of faxed signatures.

--
Thanks, though this sounds like a silly judgment.

It looks to me as if the great majority of judges and 
lawyers, and hence presumably the great majority of CEOs, are 
blissfully unaware that one can do anything with a fax other 
than scan it in from paper and ink at one end, while it is 
printed out on paper and ink at the other end.

In actual fact a very large proportion of faxes never see 
paper and ink at either end, creating endless opportunities 
for manipulation.

This is a big problem for me, because I want to scare
businessmen into using digital signatures.  

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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At 02:35 PM 1/16/98 -0500, Robert A. Costner wrote:
>At 10:07 AM 1/16/98 -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
>>I believe that there is case law or legislation that a faxed
>>signature is worthless if it is bit for bit identical with
>>another signature, which of course it usually is these days.
>>
>>Can anyone with a spot of legal knowledge give me something
>>impressive sounding to scare people who rely on those
>>signatures.
>
>In Georgia, the state appeals court declared that faxes are "beeps and
>chirps" and therefore not writings.  As a fax is not a writing, it cannot
>have a signature.  Therefore the signature cannot be valid.  This was in a
>case that involved a required notice to arrive by a certain time.
>
>Traditionally, on a writing anything is a signature including an 'X', spit,
>and the words "Mickey Mouse".
>
>
>  -- Robert Costner                  Phone: (770) 512-8746
>     Electronic Frontiers Georgia    mailto:pooh@efga.org  
>     http://www.efga.org/            run PGP 5.0 for my public key
>
>
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of 
the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, 
not from the arbitrary power of the state.

http://www.jim.com/jamesd/

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Any lawyers on this list may want to correct me, but as I understand 
it contract law is *extremely* flexible concerning what a "signature" 
is.  It is perfectly legal to negotiate a contract via conventional, 
plaintext e-mail.  If you wrote a contract for me to sign and I wrote 
back "I accept this contract" then legally a contract would exist.  
This is the same as if you phoned me, described a problem, and agreed 
to pay me to solve the problem.  Legally a contract would exist 
(though it would be foolish not to put the contract in writing in 
most situations).  The law is concerned more with the ritual of 
forming the contract (preferably by writing it on some medium that 
can be examined at a later date) followed by some sort of record that 
both parties agree on the contract they formed.  In fact, businesses 
work like this all the time.  The reason it works is that the best 
way to enforce a contract is to *trust* the person you're forming a 
contract with.

Obviously, just negotiating a contract via e-mail is dangerous.  All 
of us know there are ways to forge or repudiate parts or all of this 
transaction.  A paper signature, just like a digital signature, is an 
excellent tool for non-repudiation (You say: I didn't sign that!  
Your opponent says: we know you signed this b/c this is your 
handwriting/public key/etc).  Whether or not it seems to be a good 
idea from the viewpoint of computer science is irrelevant-- the law 
focuses on the *ritual,* not the specific form of the document.

Note-- I'm deriving this statement from a study that I did on digital 
signatures in contract law that was part of my undergraduate thesis.  
I am not a legal expert.  If I am totally off-base please explain to 
me where I am wrong so I may revise my notions concerning contract 
law.


......................................................................
.                                                                    .
.....John.D.Blair...   mailto:jdblair@uab.edu   phoneto:205.975.7123 .
                   .   http://frodo.tucc.uab.edu  faxto:205.975.7129 .
 ..sys|net.admin....                                                 .
 .                     the university computer center            .....
 ..... g.e.e.k.n.i.k...the.university.of.alabama.at.birmingham....




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