Can a person obtain a notarization under an alias? Hypothetical scenario: Alan Jones and Peter Piper both live in the United States and are good friends. Alan uses the screen name J7 in a computer account, and a need has developed for Alan Jones to sign a document using the name J7 and acknowledge it before a notary. Alan has no intent to deceive anyone. Peter is well aware of the screen name. Peter is a notary, is not related to Alan, and has no financial interest relating to the document. Alan and Peter both live in a state that allows the use of personal aliases for non-deceitful purposes, and allows notaries to identify signers on the basis of personal knowledge. So is Peter allowed to take the acknowledgement of J7 and complete a certificate of acknowledgement listing the signer as just "J7"? "J7" is a personal alias, it is not a name for a business. The question is inspired by postings on notary forums and blogs where the notaries/authors assert that a person's true legal name is whatever appears on the legally acceptable identification document they present to the notary and the name on the certificate of acknowledgement should exactly match the name on the ID credential, regardless of how the name appears in the document being notarized. The implicit assumption in these postings is usually that the signer and notary are strangers.
Unless the notary personally knows the signer, the notary should, and normally will, ask for identification, and the name that the notary puts in the notarization certificate should be copied exact6ly from whatever ID is presented. For Alan Jones to sign as J7, he would need some sort of official proof, acceptable to the notary, that he is "J7". What would that be? I doubt that any notary would certify such a doccument. (If the document is signed as "Alan Jones" but the ID says "Alan J Jones" I am not sure if the notary must follow the ID or may follow the document, assuming that the notary is convinced that the two are the same person. Many notaries in practice will follow the ID.) I agree that the normal way would be for the document to say "Alan Jones, also known as 'J7'", and possibly include wording such as "I Alan Jones, am the person who posts on site XYZ.com as "J7", and specifically who posted a message starting {quote} at {timestamp}." (Or it could give the secure hash of the message, or of several messages.) This would clearly est6ablish a link between the document and the online conversations/acts that it is meant to refer to. The questions says: a need has developed for Alan Jones to sign a document using the name J7 I doubt that doing such a thing is either required or helpful. Rather I suspect he will need to sign a document in which he acknowledges being the particular "J7" involved in the matter.
All the CC licenses permit anyone to use the licensed content, and to make copies of it for others. Some of them permit using it for commercial purposes, others (the ones including the -NC- clause) do not. Some CC licenses permit creating modified versions of the original work (derivative works), others (the ones including the -ND- clause) do not. I do not know of any standard license which allows users to create and distribute derivative works, but not to distribute the original. The license used by Project Gutenberg permits re-use and re-distribution, but if a fee is charged beyond recouping expenses requires the removal of the PG name and logo. One problem is that if derivative works are allowed, this would include works which are only trivial modifications to the original, which would have the effect of allowing distribution of the original. If the main concern is about commercial sales, possibly a CC-NC-SA license would effectively serve the purpose? That allows redistribution, including of derivative works, but forbids commercial reuse or distribution without separate permission, and requires all redistribution to be under the same license. Otherwise a new license for this situation might have to be created. It is often a good idea to have the assistance of a lawyer with IP expertise in creating a new license, or the wording chosen may have unexpected effects or include unintended contradictions. Or one could simply place a basic copyright notice along with text such as "Modified versions may be created only with permission from the author. Request permission at work-permisisons@example.com". However, if the work proves popular, there might be a large volume of requests.
Does Amazon prohibit a family of adults from sharing a single Amazon account? No, or at least it seems unlikely. As outlined in my answer &amp; comments on Law Meta, a domestic or family-oriented character is palpable in the clause. That weakens the notion that Amazon's intent is to preclude scenarios which are of a personal-domestic nature and short of commercial/sublicensed use. The language &quot;You are responsible for [...] restricting access to your account&quot; seems more permissive than something akin to &quot;only you are allowed to access your account&quot;. The former language is consistent with the term &quot;non-exclusive&quot;, which otherwise seems to have no relevance or purpose in the clause. Users' ability (if any) to enter multiple payment methods with different names (i.e., card holder name) could be an additional indication that the scenario you have in mind is acceptable to Amazon. It is easy for a company to implement a validation for the purpose of identifying significant discrepancies of holder names and/or to have the user confirm that all payment methods refer to one same owner. The latter approach is more conclusive for scenarios where a woman has changed names as a result of getting married or divorced. The fact (?) that Amazon declined to include that simple validation weakens the notion that the company is genuinely interested in sticking to a rule of one-person per account.
There is no requirement to name the parties to a contract I just bought a cup of coffee. I did not give my name to the other party to that contract and while I know the name of the shop, I do not actually know the legal entity I contracted with. Nevertheless, we have a binding contract and, for example, if that coffee gave me food poisoning, I would have legal recourse under that contract. Similarly, there is no difficulty signing a contract under a pseudonym - it still creates a legally binding relationship. The practical difficulties While there is no legal problem, there is an evidentiary one - if someone enters a contract and later disclaims doing so, how do you prove that they did? Or vice-versa, if someone alleges that it was you that entered the contract, how do you prove that you didn’t. What you need is some way of definitively but anonymously tying the person to the contract. I can think of lots - a fingerprint, DNA, public key cryptography, a trusted third-party intermediary to name just a few. This is essentially a technical problem rather than a legal one.
Name-changing can facilitate escaping liability, so that e.g. if you are liable to someone for $20,000 and you change your name, you may be able to evade that liability. If a name change is made public, then others who have a legal claim against you are officially put on notice that Elmore James is now known as Lee Smith, and paperwork naming the respondent can be properly filled out. A criminal background check will not catch fact such as that you earlier caused damage to another person's property.
The Utah Department of Professional Licensing does not issue licenses for travel agents, and there seems to be no evidence of a statutory requirement for licensing. Therefore it's unclear what status this license has. I did see a number of online places offering to train people to be travel agents, and perhaps one of them offers a certificate of training. There is such a thing as an IATA number, and some hotel might require providing one's IATA number. If a person does not have an IATA number and the hotel does not verify the IATA number, then it would be fraud to falsely make up a number in order to obtain a benefit. The person could be sued to recover the amount of the discount. If the person has an IATA number, then there nothing obviously fraudulent, but you would have to inspect the conditions for using an agent discount. IATA requires you to work at a registered agency to get an agent number, and the proof requirements are substantial enough that it would be surprising if a person could get away with just claiming to work at a travel agency. The organization would certainly be in a good position to sue a person for falsifying the application (note also that the application is subject to binding arbitration by the Travel Agency Commissioner). So it depends on who gave the discount, what the required, what if any accreditation was used to get that discount, and what the actual facts are (i.e. does the person actually work for an agency making at least $10,000 a year).
Probably not, without permission. Images of the character are usually copyrighted. The characters themselves are usually protected by trademark. Using the name of a fictional character without permission would imply endorsement by the firm that published works with that character. I've taken day long seminars focused mostly on all of the things that comic book companies do to protect their intellectual property rights in their characters. Of course, if you live in Finland, it is likely that no one in the U.S. would decide to take up the case for a U.S. media property, either because they aren't aware of it, or because it isn't economically worthwhile to pursue.
Signing a will, as with any other document, is intended to represent a voluntary choice to assent to the document. In the case of a will, a valid signature by the testator expresses the testator's intent that his or her estate be governed by the provisions of the will. Signing using the hand of an unconscious testator (or an unwilling one) would be an act of forgery. It would certainly not create a valid will. In addition, since the witnesses generally certify that it was signed by the testator in their presence they would have committed an act of perjury. Whether either act als constituted fraud I am not sure, but these are clearly not legal acts. (There are cases where a will can be signed without witnesses, most commonly a holographic will, but they do not seem to apply here.)