Are digital copies of official documents lawfully represented? In order to reduce my (personal) paperwork and its governance, I was thinking to scan all my official documents and save them somewhere digitally. This way, my closet would not be filled with papers from years back (which I'm not keen on throwing away) and I could create some sort of digital classification system which would make my life a lot easier too. Example documents are: receipts, guarantee vouchers/certificates, documents of my bank/insurance company, pay slips, etc. The objective is to reduce the pile of papers, so I would throw away the paper copies. Of course, I can't do this if digital copies are not acceptable in court and other official (legal) activities (i.e. legally binding). Are you aware of an (international) regulation that approves what I would like to do, or should I stick with the traditional paper saving approach for now?
Short Answer: There Is No International Legal Standard The question of whether a scanned copy of a document is acceptable evidence in a court proceeding or bureaucratic procedure depends upon the rules and laws of each particular country and private organization that requires you to produce records. There is no international regulation that applies across the board, and the rules aren't even necessarily the same for every litigation forum in a country. In some contexts, acceptance of digitized records is widespread. Acceptance of digitized records tends to be less great in jurisdictions where computers are not a ubiquitous part of life (e.g. Third World and developing country bueaucracies and courts), and tends to be less in bureaucracities than in legal proceedings (because low level bureaucrats are often more rigid than the senior civil servants of the judiciary). Best Practices For Digitizing Records The International Standards Organization (ISO), whose standards are often adopted by reference by big businesses, has standard procedures for digitizing records, but these are merely best practices adopted by a reputatable international organization and often incorporated by reference by others, rather than having any legal fource of their own. For example, the U.S. federal government references this standards in connectins with its own E-Gov initiative to digitize its records. Another set of best practices for digitizing records has been developed by ARMA International (formerly an acronym for the Association of Records Managers and Administrators and now a proper name). Wikipedia identifies these best practice standards and some select national safe harbor regulations such as those designed by the National Archives in the U.K. Evolving Standards For Courts Increasingly, courts in the developed world only require an original rather than a scanned image or photocopy, in cases where the authenticity of the original is in doubt (i.e. where there are facts that suggest that it is possible that the original is fake or forged), but this is certainly not universal international practice for all purposes for which you might use a document. For example, in U.S. federal courts under the federal rules of evidence, which are copied verbatim or in substance by many state courts, the necessity of an original document for use a court evidence is covered mostly by Rules 901-903 (authentication and identification) and by Rules 1001-1008 (contents of writings, recordings and photographs). The most pertinent of these to your question is Rule 1002: Requirement of the Original An original writing, recording, or photograph is required in order to prove its content unless these rules or a federal statute provides otherwise. But, while this default rule would seem to put the kibosh on your plan, in fact, the exceptions to it, largely swallow the general rule of Federal Rule of Evidence 1002. For example, Federal Rule of Evidence 1003 states: Admissibility of Duplicates A duplicate is admissible to the same extent as the original unless a genuine question is raised about the original's authenticity or the circumstances make it unfair to admit the duplicate. But, even in the U.S., for example, some immigration court judges are in practice very skeptical of duplicates of documents from foreign countries and insist upon originals. On the other hand, some U.S. federal trial courts and an increasing minority of state courts in the U.S., require all documents using in court except those for which authenticity is in doubt, to be scanned and used in electronic form only. Courts in some jurisdictions require originals or original certifications of copies from third parties, if they are used in trials, but not if they are referred to in preliminary litigation paperwork. Arbitration forums tend to be more lax regarding the requirement of original documents than courts. The Requirements Of Government Agencies And Corporate Bureaucracies Government agencies (e.g. immigration offices, the Department of Motor Vehicles, licensing agencies) and large corporate bureaucracies (e.g. life insurance companies and brokerages) often insist on documents that are either originals or are copies of the original with an original certification by the agency that created them (even when no official statute or regulation requires that they do so). For example, many businesses will not reimburse employees for expenses if original receipts are not provided. Rules of Thumb As a rule of thumb, either an original or an original certication of a copy of educational transcripts, birth certificates, death certificates, transcripts of court proceedings, certificates of good standing for a business, and government licenses are often required by government bureaucracies, business bureaucracies, and courts. It is also a good rule of thumb to keep an original, or a copy of the original with an original certification by a government agency, is necessary for any document that must be signed or that has an official seal. The need for an original also depends upon substantive law that applies to a particular kind of document. Some documents (sometimes called "real" documents) embody a legal right rather than merely serving as evidence of a legal right. Some examples of "real" documents include: paper currency; "live" checks, money orders and promissory notes; warehouse receipts; stock certicates; certificates of title (depending upon the document, sometimes and sometimes not); and a last will and testament. In contrast, digital copies are usually sufficient for invoices, bank statements, receipts, pay slips, etc. that do not contain a signature or official seal (and obviously, that are not paper currency). A Compromise Solution When a law office or corporation goes "paperless" the most common procedure is to identify each electronically scanned file with some sort of index number. The index number is incorporated in an index that makes it possible to locate the particular box or better yet, labelled folder within a particular box, in which the paper document is stored. The indexing process usually indexes documents arbitrarily with no effort made to keep documents that relate to each other in the same place. The sole purpose of the index is to make it possible to find the original if necessary. Once documents are scanned and indexed, the firm then to send all of the actual paper documents either to a company that stores them in a remote warehouse (e.g. this one), basement, garage, shed, or a storage unit rented by the company at a self-storage facility. This makes the day to day offices of the record owner paper free without actually destroying the original records. Record Retention Policies A closely related issue is how long you need to retain a document, something for which law firms and businesses often establish a "records retention policy" that depends mostly upon the relevant statute of limitations and the domestic laws that apply to the company. These policies and laws in some jurisdictions that create a safe harbor for persons who adopt record retention policies balance the practical need to throw out dated paperwork, the circumstances under which paperwork might be needed in the future, and the often harsh penalties for throwing out paperwork if you know that it might be used as evidence against you in a future lawsuit (which is called spoliation of evidence). A practice of saving paperwork for one year after the relevant statute of limitations for a lawsuit expires is common, but some kinds of paperwork needs to be retained much longer such as vital statistics records (e.g. birth certificates, marriage certificates and divorce decrees) that can prove citizenship and marital status, documents showing the purchase price of property that may later be sold until it is sold (for tax purposes), documents that prove ownership of property that is still owned, documents that prove final payment of debts, many documents related to a divorce, and many documents related to estate planning.
I'm a notary. If someone showed me a marked-up license, I'd refuse to perform the notarization, and make a note of the persons name and phone number, to make sure I would never make another appointment with the person. Is there a law that says I have to refuse? I don't think so. Is there is a law that says I can refuse if I have any doubts about the person's identity? Absolutely.
It doesn't really require anything beyond your say-so that it is what you say it is; that would be enough to satisfy the requirement for authentication. From there though, as with any evidence, it's going to be up to a jury to decide how much weight to give the evidence. So the more you can show them to prove that the record is real -- and to knock down any questions the opposing party will raise -- the more likely they are to believe it. So if you just bring a printout that looks like it could easily have been forged, the jury may be thinking about that. If you can bring in a data forensics expert to say the document couldn't have been faked, that's probably going to help. Addendum: As a practical matter, I wouldn't expect this to be much of an issue. Unless you're dealing with a savvy opposing party, the authenticity of e-mails seems to be generally assumed. Courts (1) generally assume that parties aren't perpetrating frauds; and (2) are generally run by judges with little to no technical savvy, who don't realize that one could forge an e-mail, let alone all the different ways it could be done. I've personally entered countless e-mail printouts without them being questioned, even though either party could have just gone down into the e-mail thread and changed what the other side had said earlier in the conversation. To avoid the issue, though, it might be that sending the e-mail to a Gmail account would elimimate the question.
A document can be distributed under more than one license. Just because it has been made available under a CC license for free, doesn't mean that IEEE can't negotiate a different license with different terms that allow them to sell the content. (This is similar to the way that a software library can be available for free under a license that permits non-commercial use, but also be made available for a fee for commercial use.) If you want to know whether IEEE is legally selling Aaron Swartz's manuscript, you can contact Morgan &amp; Claypool, the publisher that owns the copyright, and ask them whether this use by IEEE has been authorized by them. For the other documents you mention, contact MIT Press. Etc.
In the US, there are provisions of criminal law especially 18 USC 2320 which make selling counterfeit goods a crime. Counterfeit goods are subject to forfeiture to the US government. However, this requires a formal legal determination that the goods are counterfeit, and no provision of the law excuses a seller for illegally seizing property that they hold in trust for a party. There might be a contractual provision that allows this, e.g. &quot;at our sole determination we may deem property to be counterfeit and will destroy it, without compensation&quot;. In that case especially with online services, it matters what the &quot;contract&quot; says. It is not sufficient to say &quot;It's somewhere on the web page&quot;. Generally there is an &quot;I agree&quot; button that links to a document: and that document may refer to other documents such as &quot;Community standards&quot;. So if the restriction is in the agreement or in a document referred to by the agreement, then it would be legal. The assumption is that the party agreeing to the terms reads &quot;the agreement&quot;, and also reads or understands any terms mentioned in &quot;the agreement&quot; (they become part of the agreement).
There is something wrong-sounding about that claim. Owning a thing (such as a book) means that you can dispose of it however you want. If it is a physical book, then unless this is a book of top secret classified information, the US government has no control over the item, nor does the copyright holder have any right to prevent you from giving away your copy. Electronic books, however, are another matter, since often you don't buy such books, you buy a license to use the book (like a software license). The license terms of an electronic book could be subject to various controls, and the license might be non-transferable. The underlying logic of this is that under the doctrine of first sale, you are allowed to do whatever you want with intellectual property that you buy, and therefore to restrict re-distribution of electronic IP, software especially is typically not itself sold, and just the permission to use it is. If this is an electronic book, the copyright holder would be able (though not necessarily willing) to permit you to transfer your copy to someone else. Of course you can't give a copy to two people unless you have two licenses.
To what degree are such emails admissible in court as evidence, and what weight do they carry? Your own statement, when offered by you as evidence, is hearsay, unless it comes within an exception to that rule. Recorded recollection might be one of the better exceptions. There is also a chance that you could get it in as a business record of the company if you were using a company email account and the company stores all of its email communications. The documents also sometimes come in to provide fair context for a conversation with a party-opponent's statements that are admissible. It appears that Canada does not follow the modern British rule (which repealed the hearsay rule in civil cases in 1995), which if it were available, would come in without any difficulty at all. But, Canada does have what it calls a "principled exception" (which is somewhat broader than the parallel U.S. residual hearsay exception) that is generally available if the document can be shown to be reliable and there is an unavailable witness, or if there proponent of the document can show that it is reliable and necessary for other reasons. Even if the document itself is not admissible since it is hearsay, you could still testify as to what the boss said from your own recollection, and then have your lawyer ask you why you are sure that this is what was said. You would answer that you contemporaneously wrote a confirming letter to the boss spelling out what was said and you reviewed it to refresh your recollection before testifying at the hearing or trial. These kinds of confirming letters are used quite frequently in business and employment litigation. And, in my experience, these statements tend to be surprisingly effective and persuasive, because, while they do not foreclose the possibility that the person writing it was lying or inaccurate in the confirming email account, it does rule out the possibility that you forgot exactly what was said, and you provided the boss with an opportunity to dispute you which the boss didn't feel an obligation to correct. If one party has a coherent account in confirming emails of what was said, and the other party is trying to remember what happened a year or two earlier without notes from the witness stand, the person with the coherent, documented account is almost always going to come across as more credible unless the other side can show that your confirming emails are not infrequently gross misrepresentations of what really occurred. (I've also dealt with witnesses like that now and then.)
You clearly cannot provide data that you haven't stored – and not storing data is a good thing under the Art 5(1)(c) Data Minimization Principle. Despite the Art 20 data portability right being conditional on that the data subject has provided data and not on that data has been stored, I think responding to such a request with “sorry, as per our privacy policy we do not store this data” would be perfectly fine. It is also curious that you are using consent as the legal basis for the purpose of selecting the website language. How do you obtain consent from visitors? How can you prove that you got consent? In many ways, consent is the legal basis of last resort, and I'd think that legitimate interest would be a much more straightforward approach in your case.