Their product’s user experience is strictly worse than having an HTTPS portal that lets people upload and download files. Is the value add that 99% of companies that receive signed documents are too incompetent to secure such a server?
The only other thing I can think of is that it’s the javascript “blindly click through this PDF to sign” widget.
Surely, there’s some value add behind the scenes? Right?
Even if you know how to develop that (many companies don’t) and even if you wish to spend your developer resources on that instead of whatever brings in the money its not a good idea to roll your own in this case. Why? Because you are a party to the agreement you wish to attest to that it has been signed. If there is a disagreement about anything: who signed the document, when did they sign the document, what was the exact document they signed it will be your database against their word. Who knows, maybe you modified your database for your own sake? Changed the document or faked the signature altogerher. But if you paid for the service of a 3rd party who doesn’t have a financial incentive in the agreement then in any potential dispute you can get them to testify (probably in writing) to what document was signed and who signed it and when.
I get the feeling this whole business could be wiped off the face of the earth by an open source hobby project and an enterprise sales team.
https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/Digi...
I can figure out all of the above, after all I am paid to figure out things about computers. Can everyone do it? The older gentleman who drives a taxi? The nice lady who edits non-fictional books? The dancer, the barista, the construction worker, the pilot?
I don’t have an opinion on what the value of DocuSign’s business should be. I think they have an easy to replicate service with a very shallow moat. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t provide a service to people.
So you mean it's got 10x less legal weight than the Schengen accords, that guarantee you won't have a passport check going on or coming off a intra-EU flight in France?
Good luck with that. Both France and the Netherlands have both had their council of state decide, relatively recently, that violating EU agreements does not violate EU agreements.
I mean it's commercial law, so there is no high burden of proof in the first place, so I'm not so sure what these signatures add in the first place, but the fact that the EU decided something doesn't seem to carry much weight anymore.
Someone with a more software-informed background may disagree, but the judge and jury are unlikely to be programmers. It's the modern equivalent of the old "nobody got fired for buying IBM".
do we have a law, which says "use DocuSign" else a signature is not as legally binding?
honestly, it feels like a marketing and scaremongering to justify the higher price and preference over the competitors
> An electronic signature (either simple, advanced or qualified) shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements for qualified electronic signatures.
more specifically:
> Regarding qualified electronic signatures, they explicitly have the equivalent legal effect of handwritten signatures across all EU Member States.
fire your lawyer i guess
1. Evidence of an electronic signature is not a priori inadmissible in court.
2. A "qualified electronic signature", i.e., a cryptographic digital signature created by an approved hardware crypto device using keys from a certificate meeting certain requirements verified by an approved certification authority, is equivalent to a conventional paper signature.
If anything, this suggests to me that, in many practical contexts, "'click here to sign'-style Web form signatures are not legally binding" may well be a reasonable plain-language summary of Dutch law, notwithstanding EU e-signature regulations.
Adobe offers a handy review of the Dutch law on this subject https://helpx.adobe.com/sign/using/legality-netherlands.html
You know I was saying that in the context of gp asking if it’s legal to sign in Apple preview which is essentially appending a picture of your signature to a pdf with no guarantee from a third party if it’s you that signed it.
I don’t know, maybe English is not your native language, in that case, you’re mistake is understandable.
You will have a bad time if you sign a contract using apple preview and then try to argue that you’re not bound by that contract.
> For documents signed with a non-qualified electronic signature (e-signature), the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed that the signature must be ‘sufficiently reliable’ for the document to be classified as binding evidence. If the documents are not classified as binding evidence, additional evidence may be required to demonstrate the authenticity of the e- signature.
Apple preview is not sufficient in itself and needs additional evidence to support the reliability of it. I never said that it could not be used as evidence, but it’s not sufficient in itself.
Again bro, reading skills, work on them.
> Apple preview is not sufficient in itself and needs additional evidence to support the reliability of it.
The situation is not meaningfully different than with a wet signature on paper.
It doesn’t matter if you sign the contract with a pen or using the preview tool, in the Netherlands you are equally bound by both. If you dispute the authenticity of the signature, the situation will not be any different between the two.
And bro, work on your attitude.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
For other things, there are stricter legal standards of what kind of form of agreement is required, and only then they don't work. I've mentioned this example here a few times, but recently a German grocery delivery startup fell into the trap of using DocuSign for their work contracts. You can enter work contracts just fine with it, but specific clauses in work contracts require paper signature (or a strong cryptographic digital signature), so suddenly the contracts they had intended to be temp contracts were permanent contracts.
(I believe DocuSign also offers the "proper" qualified cryptographic signatures, but that's not the usual flows people think of when DocuSign is mentioned)
Where are governments involved in directly issuing smartcards?
The one "in my wallet" (spoiler: actually lurking in the back of my desk drawer, I use it so rarely) is issued by a private company who just happen to be on the government's list.
I'm sure there are many more.
E: Also Croatia, Czechia, Latvia, Liechenstein, Lithuania, Slovakia
Imagine showing up to court and trying to argue that a record in your company's database was proof that the defendant signed a legally binding contract with you. What if they deny having ever signed it? Is a judge or jury really going to take you at your word?
This is really one of those falsehoods programmers believe about the law. No, courts do not in fact care if your method of signalling agreement is not some unalienable public key cryptography scheme. Unless the law explicitly states otherwise for the kind of contract you are entering into (e.g. requiring a notary seal), contracts are regularly formed a thousand different ways. Advertise a cash-back policy? Great, that's a contract you enter into with every buyer.
And that is the actual business value - not legal, but administrative. Easy to send out, receive back, track who signed what, and when. The actual signature is a nifty feature, but isn't the business value.
Depends on the jurisdiction/norms. Civil juries are common in the US, for example.
Many companies have/used to have this advantage: Salesforce, Oracle comes to mind
There are significant use cases around complex workflows and document management. Red-lines, mutli-party contracts, delegation, record keeping, etc.