41–50 of 200 posts
The way a system like docusign works is that it is a (trusted) independent third party that will verify that the owner of email address X is the one that "signed" the specific version of an agreement. By self-hosting, you have access to the infrastructure and can manipulate it to your will. There is no proof that the counterparty signed anything - you could just manipulate it to say they did. This potential for misus…
What is the bar for a "legally binding digital signature"? Is this a very complicated topic - or is it quite simple? I can sign a PDF with OSX Preview for free. I can pay a bunch of money to sign with Docusign. Both produce a PDF with a digital image of my signature. I assume both documents constitute a legally binding agreement, so long as I actually preformed the digital signature. What justification do the e-signa…
> What justification do the e-signature SaaS companies have for their exorbitant prices? They will defend their digital signature in court. I was shocked to find these "click here to sign" contracts manage to do it all without an ounce of cryptography, but the fact is lawyers don't need cold hard math, they need a warm body to be a subject matter expert to explain to a jury that unless you're claiming someone else ha…
What is the bar for a "legally binding digital signature"? Is this a very complicated topic - or is it quite simple? I can sign a PDF with OSX Preview for free. I can pay a bunch of money to sign with Docusign. Both produce a PDF with a digital image of my signature. I assume both documents constitute a legally binding agreement, so long as I actually preformed the digital signature. What justification do the e-signa…
Docusign makes it easy to collect lots of signatures from lots of people. That’s the use-case from my POV. 1 signature on 1 doc, use any PDF tool—no problem. When a board needs to approve 4 docs and you need 5 signatures on each, it needs to be easy. Whether that’s worth Docusign’s pricing or if there’s better alternatives, up to you. But it’s objectively a helpful tool.
Collecting lots of signatures isn’t Docusign’s value prop.
The value is signature certification, and a proven track record in court.
A single signature on a PDF is not technically difficult. The machinery to reasonably guarantee (edit: verify is a better word here) that it was you who signed the PDF is the thing that matters.
The value increases from there as the complexity of the document being signed increases.
The way a system like docusign works is that it is a (trusted) independent third party that will verify that the owner of email address X is the one that "signed" the specific version of an agreement. By self-hosting, you have access to the infrastructure and can manipulate it to your will. There is no proof that the counterparty signed anything - you could just manipulate it to say they did. This potential for misus…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for creating this and making it open source. What mechanism(s) is used to ensure non-repudiation? I appreciate that the demo is not behind a sign up wall, but is account creation and email verification required for invitees to sign any documents? Are IP addresses stored as part of the digital signature? Any other mechanism?
IP addresses and browser User Agent strings are stored for each signature/submission - those are the only measures for 'non-repudiation' currently available. but i think it doens't differ from other mainstream SaaS solutions - if you read through their terms of services - they put 'non-repudiation' liability on users of their services
What is the bar for a "legally binding digital signature"? Is this a very complicated topic - or is it quite simple? I can sign a PDF with OSX Preview for free. I can pay a bunch of money to sign with Docusign. Both produce a PDF with a digital image of my signature. I assume both documents constitute a legally binding agreement, so long as I actually preformed the digital signature. What justification do the e-signa…
Mostly yes. In the EU at least, the rule is "An electronic signature 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." However, the burden of proof is higher if you dispute a "qualified electronic signature". To be qualified, there's no specific techn…
This! Just like a self-signed SSL certificate for a website: yes, the traffic will be encrypted but you cannot be sure that the website is who it says it is.
One of the features DocuSign charges a lot of money for is batch envelopes, like uploading a CSV to fill out fields and send to different recipients (basically Mail Merge). Is this something that could work in DocuSeal?
Hi everyone, my name is Alex and I'm the creator of DocuSeal. I was not happy with the existing mainstream document signing solutions so I decided to create an open-source alternative. I've been working on this project since the middle of May and here is what the tool can do so far: - PDF form fields builder - 10 field types available (Signature/Date/File/Checkbox etc) - Multiple submitters per document - Automated e…
Hi Alex, what a great idea, thank you very much. Two years ago I was evaluating different signing solutions for the company I worked with and there were two killer features that forced us to go with docusign since at the time they were the only ones really supporting it: 1. Relaying of Submissions to other Signers We often found that we needed to get a Signature from someone at another company. However, we couldn't a…
https://www.docusign.com/products/electronic-signature/legal... doesn't mention anything about videos or passports. I could see how that might be one means a third party has chosen to collect proof of intent, but haven't found anything legally mandating it.
Hi everyone, my name is Alex and I'm the creator of DocuSeal. I was not happy with the existing mainstream document signing solutions so I decided to create an open-source alternative. I've been working on this project since the middle of May and here is what the tool can do so far: - PDF form fields builder - 10 field types available (Signature/Date/File/Checkbox etc) - Multiple submitters per document - Automated e…
Thank you for creating this and making it open source. What mechanism(s) is used to ensure non-repudiation? I appreciate that the demo is not behind a sign up wall, but is account creation and email verification required for invitees to sign any documents? Are IP addresses stored as part of the digital signature? Any other mechanism?
The non-custodial party can claim they never signed, and when the custodial party produces evidence of IP address and timestamp, the non-custodial party may have a credible argument that they are faked and the person asserting those authenticated details has the motive and means to fake them.
That argument is much harder to assert with something like DocuSign because it is unlikely DocuSign would put their business on the line to fake someone's signature.
I'm not saying repudiation based on custody of the e-signature platform is a winning argument, but it's something to consider before self-hosting if you are going to use the platform to sign your own contracts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IP addresses and browser User Agent strings are stored for each signature/submission - those are the only measures for 'non-repudiation' currently available. but i think it doens't differ from other mainstream SaaS solutions - if you read through their terms of services - they put 'non-repudiation' liability on users of their services
Those are both unfortunatly trivially faked