-- 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 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG E05oBvvh8W9NDUWZgPx6YirXgrcL6+CEkbWuhVNo 4MQrt6D7Hjqw8OzIX9J2wbPBc7D77B+PochPDi4KZ 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
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