CDR: digsig frenzy follies

[A. Melon]

The label "digital signature" for
nonrefutable cryptostrong sigs 
is going down in flames. A DTMF
pulse counts as a signature Oct 2. 

Tuesday September 26 09:15 PM EDT
                       E-signatures for 30 million laptops 

                       By Ben Charny, ZDNet News

                       Touchpad maker Synaptics Inc. will bundle digital signature
                       software with its newest products and make updates
                       available to existing users.

                       Touchpad maker Synaptics Inc. has announced a deal that could create electronic
                       signatures for more than a third of the laptops on the planet.

                       The company said Tuesday it will begin to bundle its touchpads, which are used on roughly
                       40 percent of the worlds laptops, with digital signature software from Silanis Technology
                       Inc. of Montreal.

                                       Owners of an estimated 30 million laptops that use Synaptics
                                       touchpads can also download a free version of the Silanis ApproveIt
                                       software from either the Silanis or Synaptics Web sites.

                                       The deal is one of the first of several product announcements
                                       expected prior to Oct. 1, when the Electronic Signatures in Global and
                                       National Commerce Act takes effect. The new federal law makes
                                       electronic signatures legally binding.

                                       Jupiter Communications senior analyst James Van Dyke said the deal
                                       answers a piece of the electronic signature problem, including
                                       distribution.

                       Van Dyke said a bigger problem is the current lack of standards for electronic signature
                       makers.

                       "Its a good move for Synaptics, it will only cost a little and it puts them in a good position,"
                       he said. "But, we are going to be in standards hell for a while. You can feel the flames."

                       Shipping in 2001

                       The first e-signature enabled touchpads will be shipped to Synaptic users such as Apple
                       Compaq, Dell, Gateway and Hewlett Packard sometime next year, said Synaptics
                       spokewoman Mariel Van Tatenhove.

                       The software embeds a signature token into a document. Inside the token are the guts of a
                       digital signature, including a time stamp and the public and private keys. It also will include a
                       digitized version of a users handwritten signature. The signature will appear on the
                       document.

                       The software to be bundled on Synaptics touchpads is a stripped down version of
                       ApproveIt, which normally allows from multiple signatures on the same document. But the
                       bundled software will only allow for a single signature on Microsoft Word and Excel
                       documents.

                       The software available on the websites is called OnSign, which Synaptics introduced in July.
                       It works for Word documents. It too only lets one signature per document.

                       The OnSign software has been downloaded more than 65,000 times since its introduction
                       July 5, said Silanis spokesman Mary Ellen Power.

                       By years end, she expects more than 100,000 downloads. The site is averaging a download
                       every two minutes, she said.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20000926/tc/e-signatures_for_30_million_laptops_1.html