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 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
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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.... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBNL/2AQJjTpK3AXhBAQHJMgQAoPZfME2lyEm29ipy8CMGmt32RXhERF0D 1WyEMP+dxkcDb8LkgYwPYZZp8pAEac2Qd8puET3S6tJajj452TEPelfyKeKfMFva yFyWowFBON+R2AJT1HMXL2ArevRqTpbKD3mdjZ/qtWBbEf8Dh+gNoU0E+CoTbiEq 0lgp0nIrW9o= =I5Jy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (2)
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James A. Donald -
John Blair