Britain's 400 Years of Cyber Law 225
corbettw writes "There's a news piece in The Register this morning about a British high court ruling about email signatures, and whether they constitute binding contracts. Apparently, the 1677 Statute of Frauds dictates what constitutes a contract, so an email with a disclaimer in the sig could qualify under the language of the statute. Since the statute predates the Constitution of the U.S., a clever lawyer could argue it applies here equally. Maybe there's some truth to the Internet joke 'take off every sig for great justice!'"
I am not a lawyer... (Score:4, Interesting)
- Andrew
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
W. T. F.
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what what the Constitution's authors would have wanted. Ri
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, every unstated assumption is to be resolved using the customs, practices and semantics of the day, which were, lo-and-behold the British customs. Particularly those rights that are not explicitly stated, but not to be construed as non-existent, as per the first amendment.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
English language != English law
When they wrote the word "judge" the meant a judge as understood in the british system.
The American legal system is spelled out sufficiently without invoking British law. 'Judge' is a noun, and the concept goes back well before the British legal system. One need not invoke British law to know what a judge is, either.
When they wrote the word trial, they meant a trial
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
This is a red herring. The portions of the English language that described the legal system at the time derive their meaning from English law. Judge, property right, crime, libel, etc.
The American legal system is spelled out sufficiently without invoking British law.
Today, after 230 years of case law, that is mostly the case, back then it was the complete opposite.
Or one could stop trying to read tea leaves and actually interpret what's written down, which was quite clearly Je
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
OK, if case law is the argument, then the case is easy to make: would one rely on law from the 1600s as a relevant comparison? Doubtful. And this isn't a matter of case law, this is a matter of an actual *statute* which does *not* exist in American law.
Put it this way - show me the last time someone successfully used a British statute from the 17th century as valid case law in America.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
However, just because it doesn't happen oft
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:3, Informative)
Easy, and very relevant to our subject: every contract signed before the declaration of independence was still considered valid the day after. How was that contract interpreted? under the British statute even after independence and the writing of the constitution.
Hence the legal principle is there: in principle an old British statute can still have legal weight today.
Of cour
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the Founding Fathers considered completely scrapping the British legal system and starting over from scratch....and decided that this was going a bit too far and would take way too much work, that the existing common law legal system that the States had been using worked not just fine but very well, and so incorporated the British common law syst
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:3, Informative)
New York, the most important economic area of the young republic, based its legal traditions on the Roman-Dutch law of the Dutch republic. The influence of the Republic of the United Netherlands on American institutions is quite obvious, if only because of the federal structure and explicit self-delegation of legislative power in an explicit constitution. The very notio
It's exactly what they wanted. (Score:5, Informative)
The American court system in particular was essentially of British design, and most of the early judges and lawyers had read the a lot of British common law to pass the Bar. (At lower levels, the pre- and post-revolutionary court systems probably didn't change that much.) It was very common for aspiring lawyers to read Blackstone's as part of their studies until fairly recently--in my opinion, the lack of this today is really too bad. Recall also, that many of this country's Founders were lawyers who had read the Common Law and were used to thinking in its terms: Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Dickinson, Oliver Ellsworth, Patrick Henry, and George Mason are just a few; I'm probably forgetting a lot of others. These were men whose concepts of fairness and equality, perhaps of liberty in general, owe at least some credit to their understanding of law.
The everyday jurisprudential theories at work in the courts of England and post-revolutionary America really were about the same, on issues like torts, the definition of crime, etc. Over time there has been divergence on some issues, but there are still a lot of similarities. (More-so than between either the British or American system and a totally different theoretical foundation, like the Roman/Napoleonic Code that is the basis for the French and some other Continental systems.)
Law changes and evolves over time; it's not something that you can easily just create anew out of whole cloth. The American legal system was built on the conceptual foundations provided by Common Law, and there is nothing wrong with referring to it if precedent is needed and nothing more recent can be found. This doesn't happen often (after all, we have 200+ years of our own precedent to go through now), but occasionally some very old Common Law case can be elucidating.
This is not to say that a law is somehow automatically valid here, just because it was present in Britain prior to 1792 (that's an entirely separate branch of government anyway), or even that a court ruling there has an immediate and automatic effect here. It just means that in making arguments and looking for precedent, British case law prior to 1792 is fair game.
Re:It's exactly what they wanted. (Score:2)
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:5, Informative)
Go read the WikiPedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_United_St
Essentially, every country that had been colonized at some point by Britain uses British common law. In the case of the U.S., those precedents are overridden by any subsequently passed laws, but other than that BCL still stands.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Any important laws have long since been superseded by the Constitution, Amendments, etc. In cases where they haven't, it's probably something old and obscure, like regulations on badger farming or some crap.
On top of that, what exactly is wrong with considering another country's laws, particularly on new stuff? If some other country has alread
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Hey! I AM a badger farmer, you insensitive clod!
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
More than that, some (but dwindling) former colonies still have the British "Law Lords" as their judiciary of last resort (via either the House of Lords (for Scotland at least) or the Privy Council).
You mean Roman Civil Law (Score:2)
Re:I AM a lawyer... (Score:2, Informative)
Much of our law comes from British common law. It would not take a very clever attorney to get a court to consider English common law. It is done all the time where there is either no precident in the U.S., or it is such a long established rule of law (like the SOF), that it is taken as a fundamental underpinning of our system.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
As another poster has said, the Constitution did not abolish common law. It stands as more of a super statute (because it should not be readily modified by an act of Congress). So, it molded U.S. common law that passes down from the British. If you're talking about a "school of thought," though, it might be the one that belives that precedent should count for something and that j
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
And further, don't the US courts still take into consideration rulings involving such "common" british common law, even where it happens way after 1792?
I can't find it back right now, but I thought there was a case (involving treason I think) ruled on in the late 1800s in an Irish court (still in union with England back then) which set precedent that is recognised in the USA too. Wish I could remember the name...
Re:Vaffunculo (Score:2)
The idea is that if the US has not passed a statute that would invalidate the precedent set by pre-1776 British courts, those British court decisions and common law should be used to guide the judge.
US laws and court decisions since independence get priority, but in the absence of those(or where those give equal weight to different decisions), the common law traditions inherited from the UK should be considered.
Re:Vaffunculo (Score:3, Informative)
In this case, of course, US law was partially derived from British common and statute law. Examining it can help a court deturmine just what the law is, and
Re:Vaffunculo (Score:2)
Anonymous Coward getting basic latin terms wrong defending a fascist? Scalia, is that you?
Ne me frego (Score:2)
That's my opinion/understanding, anyway, though I've also seen it defined as meaning "Me ne frego," or "I don't give a damn," which is listed here [about.com].
Not exactly polite, but not quite the same as giving s
Re:Ne me frego (Score:2)
'Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese's weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship. "The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, 'To my critics, I say, 'Vaffanculo,' " punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:5, Informative)
I got a J.D. but never bothered to take the bar. But any intro class will explain how American and British Common law are related. It isn't worth discussing here because it will degenerate into a flame war about the war for independence...
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Thus, we see once again how Ignorance bullies Enlightenment to STFU. At least on Slashdot.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:3, Interesting)
The US inherited the British constitution. The law being talked about was in the British constition before the US inherited that constition, so it's in the US constition too.
Now, the thing being talked about here is, if a British judge made any conclusions in relation to email about that law in their constitution (which is in the US constition too), does that also mean that the same conclusions could be assumed for the US ?
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, thw Unitee Kingdom does not have a set, written constitution like the United States, India, France, and so on. According to the wikipedia, the British Constitution [wikipedia.org] is an "unwritten consitution." That certainly is not to claim that constituional law in the UK is pure chaos. To quote the article:
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
This is, of course, utter nonsense.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Uhm, there is no written British Constitution.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Wrong. There is no single document that describes a British constitution, rather the constitution of British law is its jurisprudence in aggregate - much of it writ in statute and in judgement.
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
might, might not, that's what lawyers are for; however since a more rational explaination of the decision is,
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_precedent [wikipedia.org]
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
Re:I am not a lawyer... (Score:2)
No. But, British common law from before the Revolution sometimes does.
American common law originates in Britain (the slate wasn't wiped clean at the time of the Revolution) but they did go their seperate ways at that point. So things British judges said before 1776 are part of American common law, and are possibly binding if no newer American law has replaced it.
In summary, this ruling is not binding in the U
example of a recent case in which this happened (Score:2)
English common law, in the 13th century created a concept called the Year and a Day Rule [wikipedia.org] in which a person is not culpable for a person's death due to injuries they caused if the person dies 366 days after the injuries were caused.
The Wi
ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! (Score:2)
http://www.jimloy.com/issues/unwrittn.htm [jimloy.com]
Common law: England has no formal constitution. Their "constitution" is the accumulation of court cases down through history. Their law of the land is what judges say, in addition to the laws made by Parliament. The U.S.A. has inherited some of this "common law." And the courts have added much more. But the Court has decided that there are no common law crim
Confusion again (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing this means is that if you include your name in your signature (the email signature again, i.e., the part after the "-- "), whatever you wrote in your email can be treated the same way as something you wrote in a regular letter that you signed with your name.
But that's neither surprising nor worrying - quite the opposite. The implicit statement in the story summary that the disclaimers some companies like to put into emails could somehow constitute a valid contract is a big, fat piece of Slash-FUD.
Speaking of which, I propose the term "Slash-FUD" for intentional FUD in and intentionally misleading summaries and headlines of Slashdot stories - the problem seems to have grown so large in recent years that I think it deserves a special name. Death to Slash-FUD! Let that be our battle cry.
Re:Confusion again (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It seems Zonk either didn't actually read the article before approving it, or read it but didn't understand one word of it.
Pretend for a second that this comment was an email, that I was making an offer of some sort, and Bogtha was my real name. The fact that 'by Bogtha' above my comment does not mean that I've "signed" the "contract". The fact that 'Bogtha' appears at the bottom, as part of the comment and not part of the meta-data, means that I've "signed" the "contract".
In essence, a British law defines the rules by which you can consider a document to be signed. A judge looked at a case involving an email, and decided that according to that law, a From header doesn't count, but a name at the bottom does.
It's really not that interesting and bears little resemblance to what is described in the summary. You can read the original law here [tiersma.com].
Re:Confusion again (Score:2)
Mutual assent, consideration, competant parties (depending on the type of contract this can include minors, drunks, the insane etc., but the contracts can still be ratified...) etc etc etc...
Re:Confusion again (Score:2)
Re:Confusion again (Score:2)
Err... but I don't view signatures.
"Disable Sigs - Strip sig quotes from comments" is a Slashdot user setting.
In short, the only way for Slashdot to strip sigs is because they are flagged as special meta-data, not as part of the comment.
By your own argument, Slashdot sigs cannot count as "signing" the "contract" - it has to be written into the body. Email works differe
Re:Confusion again (Score:2)
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha"
Yes sir, we confirm the order of Zonkers will be shipping. Seeing your triple emphasis in your sig, we will ship three cartons by overnight delivery. Billing will be by separate message.
Thank you for your business,
Miss Pers Eve Understanding,
Contract Sales
Re:Confusion again (Score:2)
I basically agree with your comment. However, the article does have to do with email disclaimers. This ruling, IMHO, implies that no content of an email message may be legally binding if it doesn't include the full names of the involved parties.
I guess one might hypothesize that this means that no disclaimer signature in an email can be legally binding, as one of the involved party (the reader) should at least affix their signature at the bottom of it to certify acceptance of the conditions. That's pure s
Re:Confusion again (Score:2)
It seems the summary mutated to "email with disclaimer" from "signature and disclaimer" in TFA and "disclaimer" only (in Rekon title) and "name or initials" in Rekon blog ariticle. While it may be slasfud, I guess the confusion is somewhat understandable since all the articles speak of it differently. So does a disclaimer alone
Lawer: and also . . . (Score:2)
Neither the British Statute of Frauds, nor that of any US jurisdiction of which I am aware (or any non-US Common Law jurisdiction, for that matter) requires a signature. A *writing* is required from the person against whom the contract is to be enforced.
The purpose of the statute was to deal with some then-common frauds. Particularly, perjured testimony as to the existenc eof an oral contract to sell land.
Ahem. (Score:5, Interesting)
At least, I am almost certain that's the case in my area... Napoleonic code and all that. YMMV, IANAL, etc...
Er, Yes it can... (Score:2)
Now I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that emails ARE important.
Feloneous
Re:Ahem. (Score:2)
It would then be up to the court to decide if the evidence considered altogether (such as a sequence of emails leading up to the contract) constituted proof of contract. Certainly a single email out of the blue saying "I want a million widge
Re:Ahem. (Score:2)
The big problem with email is the hearsay rule. Look at the path. *Every* one of those transitions is a "heard and said" which requires a hearsay exception (either an actual exception, or to fall outside the rule as "non hearsay").
You told your computer, and then it said . .
Your ISP's first machine heard, and it said . .
[lots more]
The recipient's ISP heard, and it said . .
The mail server hea
Re:Ahem. (Score:2)
Re:Ahem. (Score:2)
hawk
Not an issue (Score:2)
Re:Ahem. (Score:2)
The only thing I can think of which is admissible as proof in a court is a confession. Just about everything is admissible as evidence, but the court will be very skeptical about all of it (including first-hand witness reports - people are lousy witnesses). When there isn't any proof, a jury decides based on whatever they want.
All forms of uncertified mail are pretty worthless unless the other party admits to having written it, i
Statue of Frauds definately applies in the US (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_frauds [wikipedia.org]
Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:5, Informative)
Since the statute predates the Constitution of the U.S., a clever lawyer could argue it applies here equally.
The USA declared independence and is therefore independant of the British legal system. The same goes for Ireland too. do you think the 1801 Union Act still applies there because it predates their constitution? :P
In the British legal system a contract is formed when the following are all true:
For example, if you exchange e-mails with your girlfriend and you promise to take your girlfriend her to the pictures if she buys you a pint tonight, and she does, then she can sue for breach of contract if you do not take her. Notice the agreement is independant of the medium it is formed in. If some new medium communications medium existed tomorrow, contract law still applies to it.
Simon.
Re:Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:2)
Re:Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:2)
Re:Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:2)
Really? Then how come British common law is the foundation for Roe v. Wade?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade [wikipedia.org]:
"Abortion
The opinion of the Court, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, states that "the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relativel
Re:Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:2)
You answered your own question:
British common law is quoted in Roe v. Wade just as an analysis of historical opinions not as binding law
'Acceptance' (Score:2)
Under the UCC, a 'signature' is any tangible(?) mark indicating consent. It can be your legible signature in cursive. It can be your illegible signature in cursive. It can be an "X". It can be a crude drawing of Daffy Duck. It can be, in theory, an email where you say "I agree to thi
Lawyer:the wrong is wrong, clarified clarification (Score:2)
>The USA declared independence and is therefore independant of the British legal system.
Independent of the system, sure, but as for the law: the Constitution *explicitly* adopts the Common Law. Until a change in US or state law occurred, wehther by statute or Common Law (court precedent), British common law remained the same.
See (above?) for more on the Statute of Frauds, but precedents from other Common Law jurisdictions (pre
Re:Wrong, let me clarify. (Score:2)
The fact of the matter is that this precident could affect U.S. common law, as it derives from the same source. For it to apply, someone would have to use it as the basis for their case in a U.S. court, and the court would have to support its use. At that point, it becomes part of the common (or "case") law in the U.S., and other cases can simply reference it. This is why precident is so important in the courts. Much of the law that you think exists in
Mod parent up (Score:2)
I have changed my sig. (Score:2)
Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
How could a clever lawyer argue that, exactly? Didn't we have a big war a couple hundred years ago so that English laws would no longer apply in America?
Re:Really? (Score:2)
No. You had a big war so that English rule (and taxation) would no longer apply in America.
You did, in fact, keep the basis of British Common Law as a foundation of your legal system. And then built on it/superceded it over time.
It's too annoying to build a whole legal code from scratch.
Oddly enough, that's why the woman you're shacking up with (if you we
Re:Really? (Score:2)
Not true. Such a thing wasn't the British common law, isn't the US common law, and the common law marriage rules in the US are quite different from what the common law marriage rule was in British law.
1. Shacking up with someone (even for a long time) didn't cause them to become your wife in British common law and doesn't in the US.
2. There's
a clever lawyer can *argue* anything... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think "common law" means at all the same thing as an explicit statute, where Congress has set down in writing what the rule is. In those cases, the court is bound to enforce the law as written, regardless of whether or not it's the way things are usually done. Statute can break entirely new ground, make things illegal which were legal before (e.g. cocaine) or legal which were illegal before (e.
First Statute in Most States Adopts Common Law (Score:2)
For example in Missouri the following
Slashdot sigs, too? (Score:3, Funny)
A clever lawyer eh? (Score:3, Funny)
So THAT explains why whenever I order tea from Boston, I still have to send a tax to Britain.
Thanks for clearing that up.
(And just to be even clearer, while our legal system has its foundations in the English common law, we um, modify it with our own statutes and common law now. It's a little thing called independence.)
IANAL, but IAALS (i am a law student). Although a grade school history class should be enough to know that the statement in the summary was way off... hmmmm...
Re:A clever lawyer eh? (Score:2)
A clever lawyer could argue what? That has got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. It's not like the US told Britain to f*** off and we are going to make our own laws.
Re:A clever lawyer eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
And in many cases, you did. Well done and all that!
Here's the fun part though: You didn't replace every single law. Many of the British ones were perfectly servicable, and were simply taken as granted in the new system (which was obviously based heavily on the British one), and remained in force. If there is no new American l
So many things wrong with this summary.... (Score:4, Informative)
First of, the statute of frauds is exactly that, a statute. In the U.S. ach state has its own. So whether it applies to email could vary from state to state. The original English statute does not apply in the U.S.
However, most states also adopt the UCC (which applies to sales of good vs. services), which has already been interpreted that signed emails satisfy the statute of frauds writing requirement.
This isn't that big a deal, after all, even an unsigned letterhead satisfies the statute of frauds. You still need to prove offer, acceptance, and consideration to form a contract. You could still contest an email contract if there were fraudulent emails.
Re:So many things wrong with this summary.... (Score:2, Informative)
For a contract to fall within the statute of frauds (in other words, for a contract to require writing) it has to meet one of the following:
1) Marriage contracts
2) Contract must be able to be performed within one year
3) Land (real e
Conclusions are backwards (Score:3, Insightful)
The judge ruled that the name in the header did not constitute the name required for a binding contract, because it was put their automatically as a matter of course.
I think that similarly, a crappy e-mail signature disclaimer would be ruled completely invalid and not contractually binding, precisely because it is placed there as a matter of course, even when completely inappropriate.
So no longer... (Score:2)
1) An offer
2) An acceptance
3) Consideration
4) Capacity to contract
5) Legality
Where are these elements in an email footer? Perhaps there's an offer, however there is no chance to decline acceptance. The consideration cannot be the email because it's one-sided. You aren't purchasing the email.
Capacity is moot for this, and the legality is also moot.
This will be over-turned.
Re:So no longer... (Score:2)
I always understood a contract to have:
1) An offer
2) An acceptance
3) Consideration
4) Capacity to contract
5) Legality
Where are these elements in a EULA? Perhaps there's an offer, however there is no chance to decline acceptance. The consideration cannot be the email because it's one-sided. You aren't purchasing the EULA.
WHy is it possible for software EULAs to become binding at the time of sale, when the purchaser does not know the terms of any agreements he
Stem the Tide... (Score:5, Informative)
We try to apply newer statutory law first. If that doesn't work, we fall back on the common law. When we go to the common law, we look for cases that are similar, and we apply them, often from other English common law countries AFTER the revolution, because we assume they run the same system and want to see what they did. It works pretty well.
The effect, then, is that some really old cases are still good law in America, and how England has adapated them has some part in it. We don't always keep the old common law rule (seisen, for instance), and often we don't follow subsequent foreign interpretation (equitable servitudes), but there's a whooole lot of contract law that is heavily influenced by what other legal systems within the common law framework are doing.
Statute of Frauds (Score:5, Informative)
It works like this. The statute of frauds is an ancient English statute that requires certain contracts to be in writing in order to be valid. Most contracts do not have to be in writing to be valid. However, back in the day, Parliament decided there was so much fraud based on suspicious witnesses showing up and swearing you really did promise to sell your estate for a pittance that something had to be done. What they did was enact the statute of frauds and since then, English contracts for certain things (such as the sale of land) must be in writing to be valid. The exact scope of that is actually quite complex, but that's the basic idea.
At the time of the American revolution, much law was not in the form of statutes enacted by legislatures, but rather based on precedent, that is to say decisions previously rendered by the courts. That's part of what makes it a common law system. After the revolution, US state courts couldn't operate in a legal vacuum, so they continued to rely on English common law decisions for many years, not because they were obligated to do so, but because they had to come up with rules for dealing with situations, and English common law was a familar, readily acccessible source of such rules. Many states had reception statutes that instructed their courts to look to English common law precisely because they needed a source of law to apply and couldn't make up an entire legal system from scratch.
Obviously today American courts don't need to look at English common law anymore except in certain very rare situations as we have over 200 years of our own cases to look at now. However, we still have an analogous situation today in which the courts of one state will sometimes look at the decisions of another state for guidance where an issue is coming up for the first time. It's not because the other state's decisions are binding, but because they might have some good ideas and good reasoning that are worth adopting.
Today, most if not all states have enacted their own statute of frauds. The terms vary from state to state but the basic idea is the same, namely that certain contracts must be in writing to be valid. Whole books have been written on the statue of frauds. Visit the library of your local law school if you want to see more analysis than you ever imagined was possible on this issue.
Misstatement (Score:4, Informative)
that's ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
E-mail Disclaimers (Score:2)
>> It also just occured to me that with disclaimers such as:
>> "This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
>> intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom
>> they are addressed.
I always read those as though they said,
"We're total losers who couldn't proofread an e-mail address if our business depended on it, which our lawyers advise us is actually the case. Instead of setting up an easy-to-use address book to handle and ver
Statement from the Royal Governor Forthcoming? (Score:2)
Or maybe just a trolling legal neophyte. English statute law prior to 1789 is in no way relevant to US statute law. Our legal system was largely based on English common law, but that's totally separate from statute law. The US declared independence from Great Britain in 1776; being no longer under the rule British government, the US ceased to be beholden to her laws, past, present and future. T
Re:yay! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ZIG. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:wth? (Score:2)
Re:Why would it apply here? (Score:3, Funny)
We had a little bit of a scuffle about 230 years ago that made us no longer subject to British laws.
I'm trying to remember the name of that, it had some sorta name... I think Nintendo has something to do with it.
-JesseRe:Why would it apply here? (Score:2)
That said, frauds is a statutory construction in the US, so chances of this particular ruling applying is small.
Re:Why would it apply here? (Score:2)
Not so. I was once on a jury in a civil suit based on a verbal contract. A verbal contract is just as binding as a written one. In this case, we had several things to decide, and the first one was whether or not a contract existed, because if it didn't, the rest became moot. The question w
Re:that's not what a signature means (Score:2)
"I have no doubt that if a party creates and sends an electronically created document then he will be treated as having signed it to the same extent that he would in law be treated as having signed a hard copy of the same document. The fact that the document is created electronically as opposed to as a hard copy can make no d