[ajross]

FWIW: the term in the industry for that is "electronic signature". "Digital" signatures usually refer to crypto.

And one reason for worry, historically, is that international law for paperless/signatureless contract enforcement is sort of a mess. Wikipedia has a page here with links to various nations and their requirements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_signatures_and_law

Not a lawyer nor speaking for the FSF. But it seems not entirely unreasonable to me that a conservative approach to copyright assignment would have picked the path they chose. It's just a hard problem.

If you want to ding the FSF, ding them on the copyright assignment requirement. Whining about the process seems a little too much to me.