[jazzyjackson]

> 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 has access to your inbox, you're the one that clicked the button.

[doliveira]

Yeah, I find it funny to see technologists being surprised that in most cases judges won't mind that the signature wasn't done with quantum-resistent cryptography stored in a blockchain or whatever. Technical solutions to political problems...

[colechristensen]

I had to get a notary to sign my I-9 form for a new remote job. The process of identity verification involved a seemingly 19 year old dude looking at my ID and then signing a piece of paper.

A website sending you an email and tracking your IP and keeping a log... seems to be about the same level of trust to be honest.

[owenmarshall]

Ageism aside, you are describing a system where an unrelated third party who has experience validating state/federal identity documents validated yours, visually compared the person presenting the documents to the picture on the ID, then signed a log in his possession that he’d testify to in court if needed.

That feels like a pretty damn good system to me, and far beyond the system you handwave at. Where’s the complaint?

[yencabulator]

Notaries are personally responsible for any misconduct with up to a felony criminal case for violations. Including not sufficiently verifying the identity of the person in front of them. Sure, most states will just slap them with a $500 penalty, but they'll also revoke the notary status pretty quickly.

I would like to re-emphasize personally. It's not a business risk, it's a personal liability.

[alright2565]

I'm skeptical--are there any court cases where they've actually testified about this?

[bottled_poe]

Bingo. This is why it’s worth paying for. It’s more akin to paying for insurance than paying for software.

[_jal]

Like anything, but especially in law, the devil is in the details. Docusign has been rejected by a court before -

https://www.cryptomathic.com/news-events/blog/us-court-rejec...

That was fact-specific and doesn't call Docusign invalid, but it does demonstrate why simply "using Docusign" might not save you in a dispute.

[gamblor956]

Not really applicable, in that situation there were local court rules requiring physical documents and "wet" signatures (i.e., signed in person with a pen). The UST specifically noted that absent those rules DocuSign would have been acceptable.

Also...the article is from 7 years ago...

[_jal]

Of course it is applicable. The Docusign users failed to use it in a way that would be legally valid.

If you have a more recent case that seems relevant or invalidates that result, post it. Otherwise I'm not sure what being 7 years old has to do with anything.

[gamblor956]

You're attempting to make a mountain of a single instance, years ago, of an electronic signature being rejected by a non-judicial officer in a quasi-judicial proceeding and trying to make it out like a general policy when it is so rare an exception that no court before or since has ruled against the consensual use of electronic signatures by the parties.

If you have any evidence that electronic signatures can't be used in court proceedings, and not just in the limited circumstance of one US Trustee's meeting room, the onus is on you.

[_jal]

> If you have any evidence

I never claimed I did, and I have no interest in talking to someone intent on making up crap that I never said, so I'm going to ignore you now. Life is too short to put up with bad-faith bullshitters.

[jjfoooo4]

They would need the warm body to explain the cold hard math anyways