Ben Laurie wrote:
Well, in the UK, it is the Law Society's opinion that existing law
applies equally to digital signatures.
Good for them. So does that mean when user
software uses a digsig to ensure message
integrity, it also committed the user to
a contract?
In general, most of the digsig laws tended to
fall back to stating that a digital signature
was not to be rejected as a signature just
because it was in digital form. Others said
something much more complicated, and often
created two disctinct legal regimes for digsigs.
In all that, there remains a huge difference
in the meaning of any given signature. Most
applications have muffed this issue, often
ascribing in vague terms several distinct
purposes at once to the digsig.
(OpenPGP has been most wise and ascribes no
meaning to it, that I know of, which means it
is up to the users to negotiate.)
iang