Contractual requirements

One of the primary goals of electronic transactions is the elimination of paper, which ultimately means the elimination of conventional signatures. Digital signatures provide a way to enhance the traditional security of commerce by introducing signatures that are non-forgeable. The law of evidence in the electronic context could require the following [OTA94]:

proof that an electronic communication actually came from the party that it purports to come from
proof of the content of the transaction, namely, the communications that actually occurred between the parties during the contract formation process
reducing the possibility of alteration of the contents of electronic record of the transactions

There is some controversy in the laws regarding contract writing and signatures. Even in traditional means of paper/fax/telex -based commerce there is always a possibility of fraud. It seems though, that encrypted digital signatures are not required for an electronic message to have the status of a legal contract. According some law cases in U.S. even plaintext email messages can be used in court as a proof of a contract, even though they are easily forgeable [Wri95]. This is because email is currently already used for binding contracts. Ethically email is of course as binding as any given word.

In the world of electronic commerce also the integrity of the documents is questionable. Digital notary services can be used to ensure the non-repudiation of the documents.

[Next] [Prev] [Contents]

mtu@cs.hut.fi - 04 DEC 95