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Comment by jve | Hacker News Reader

Don't know about different Jurisdictions, but from where I am - this has NO legal binding whatsoever. We have those gov issued digital, invisible signatures for that, embedded in our personal ID card. Whatever is properly signed with digital signature, the printed out page bears no legal force.

Anyway, businesses still like to do it this way ("Signing" pdf by applying some pixels). I wonder if it is just an inconvenience to overcome both for businesses and consumers that just write this off and don't bother that it is such a weak binding. It is like some dirty workaround/hack to put those silly signatures on digital documents to get stuff done.

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In the US, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, passed by most states, clarifies that basically any sound or symbol or process is a valid electronic signature. This is in line with general contract law, under which any manifestation, written or verbal or even non-verbal, that would reasonably be understood as assent, is sufficient to form a contract. Of course, if you want a court to enforce that contract, you're going to have to prove that the other party did provide assent.

I don't know where you are at, but I know for a fact that a scan of a signed document is binding in the EU. As far as I understand it doesn't even have to be a scanned document, you can sing a digital document by adding an image of your signature or just using your finger and a touchscreen.

In the US from what I read[1] the situation is pretty much the same a scan of a signed document is binding as well as non cryptographic electronic signatures.

[1] https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/legality-electr...

Even a spoken agreement is a legal binding. But it's always best to get it on paper, and if it's important, also use at least two witnesses.

This.

Generally speaking in most countries the civil law does not specify how the contract is supposed to be made. You can buy from the shop with just a nod of your head. Only some specific agreements have to be written down (and even fewer made in front of the notary).

Huh, I'm from EU. But what I remember from lectures on digital documents, they said something different. Will have to look up this stuff.

It has been four hours, OP is nowhere to be seen. I hope they're okay amidst all the legalese.

More seriously, do let us know what you find. I've heard both sides on this but the "verbal agreement is also binding (just gl proving it)" side is usually from better sources like an actual lawyer posting on a forum as opposed to a random boss making claims about signature requirements, for example.

> from better sources like an actual lawyer posting on a foru

Yeah, you're right. Please do not take me as an authority or lawyer on that matters. It's just what I think I know, but I may very well be wrong :)

What I read is that even informational documents are considered in court. However document that bears legal validity, must contain: document name, date, signature (with exceptions) and recipient.

However I did found a relevant quote:

> Section 5. > (1) A document shall be signed in one's own hand. A document of the organization shall be signed by the person whose position is indicated in the document. A personal signature reproduced in a paper document using technical means shall not ensure legal force of the document.

https://likumi.lv/ta/en/en/id/210205-law-on-legal-force-of-d...

But I'm not sure if print->sign->scan qualifies, as the signature itself isn't put there with technical means. But this rules out putting image as a signature on PDF.

This is not talking about e-documents. E-document states that it must be signed with secure electronic signature.

I know Latvian people are reading this too and this document is very helpful in that regard: https://www.tm.gov.lv/lv/media/7605/download

Interesting, thanks for sharing all this!

> Yeah, you're right. Please do not take me as an authority or lawyer on that matters.

Sorry I phrased my previous reply badly. What I meant is generally the two camps on this, that typically one of them seems to speak from a more knowledgeable position/perspective than the other. I did not mean to suggest that you are not knowledgeable!

I don't know where you live but in the EU eIDAS regulation sees a scanned document as a Simple Electronic Signature (SES). This is the most basic possible form of signing which is accepted.

So within the EU a scanned document is valid though the law does say the method used needs to be proportional to whats at stake.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS

I've noticed that the court documents issued by civil courts in Turkey have electronic signatures with signed hashes for each of the signatories (judge, clerk and all else) in every document. To make people not freak out, they seem to have also added a PNG image of a slightly smeared generic wet-ink looking signature above the hash so it looks real on first sight. But if you look closely the signatures are all the same, and the signature says e-imza (e-signature) in cursive. Heh.

Another cool thing, the whole document itself does have a hash where you can go to the website of the ministry of justice and input the hash to verify the document. It was unexpectedly neat.

Comments in this sub-thread need to distinguish between two dimensions to a signature: is it capable of legally binding the signatory? In most cases, any format will do. Is it going to be easy to enforce (I.e., to prove it was you that signed, and not your dog headbutting your mouse?) That's a damn sight harder, and many forms of (legally valid!) E-signature might not be accepted for that reason. Depends how much assurance is needed in the circumstances.

I'm in the US and as far as I know, a digital signature is completely valid. [edit: ~it's the same way here.~ Misinterpreted parent comment.]

Yet Ford repeatedly insisted I print out the documents, sign them, and scan them. I tried a digital signature anyway - and they called me out on it.

"I tried a digital signature anyway"

Do you mean:

A) a cryptographic signature?

B) an image of your handwritten signature?

C) something else?

I think you and GP might be talking about different things.

Presumably B).

I’ve had many instances where people insist I print, sign, scan, rather than e-sign.

I too have put an image of my signature on the pdf rather than printing; I have had those both rejected and accepted.

I don’t have a printer and have been annoyed by this insistence greatly. Enough that seeing this post filled me with glee.

I meant B.

When companies ask for signatures to be done in a certain way, it’s often not because those things are a requirement to be a valid contract under the law, but because they want more evidence to support them should the contract be brought into question in court.

You could theoretically, in some cases, run a business on nothing but verbal contracts, but you would be foolish to do so because you’d have difficulty proving anything if it were disputed.

This is wrong, in the US an electronic signature can be just about anything. See my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30025456

What exactly is wrong? This doesn't contradict what I said. I agree my signature was valid without printing. It's frustrating that businesses do not.

edit: I see that I misinterpreted the parent comment. Sorry.

Yup, there was a literal act of congress that made e-signatures legally valid but it's not worth arguing with anyone who asks for an "ink" signature ime.

Same here. Real signatures on paper as well as cryptographic signatures are legally binding. Pasting a picture onto a PDF isn't but nobody wants to deal with the bureaucracy so they do it anyway. Getting a cryptographic token you can use to legally sign things is such a bureaucratic nightmare too, nobody wants to do it, including myself and I really like this stuff.

How does it work if you defraud someone using such a a PDF contract with a pasted signature?

You just get away with it because the contract wasn’t binding so there was no fraud, right?

I bet those “non-binding” contracts are actually much more binding than you might think.

Fax and autopen signatures are also valid. Make it look like a fax and you're golden.

This sounds really unlikely. Does your country also not honor any sort of verbal contracts?

Would a business agreement concluded over email not be binding? Can you get away with fraud by just tricking people into agreeing to use docusign?

If (not cryptographically) esigned contracts are not binding in your country, how does that not cripple law enforcements ability to combat fraud involving such contracts?

If I sell you a car and we use a contract like this, do I then get to keep both the car and the money? If not, how is that contract not binding?

Same over here! Only difference is that with our IDs/certs you usually have a visible cert block on the PDFs. You can get it to be invisible somehow, but that's a bit of a hassle.

But yes, anything that's not a proper digital signature might as well just be a random png pasted into a pdf. No legal binding power whatsoever.

For the software they provide us to sign documents, there is a checkbox when I sign PDF files - whether I want some overlay that indicated that it is digitally signed or not. Thats probably the user friendly part of digital signatures :)

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