Why are ink signatures considered trustworthy? Inspired by the other currently trending signature question. The world over signatures are used to tie identities and consent to documents. Signing something means you accept it and it becomes legally binding. However if signatures are to have more than a symbolic meaning, they must be verifiable. Otherwise I can always claim that I didn't really sign that document when it becomes convenient for me. But how can this be done with any degree of confidence? It feels to me like signatures could be faked too easily, and the process for verifying them is more art than science (as far as I understand it, it just involves a supposed &quot;expert&quot; looking at them and judging how &quot;similar&quot; it is to some other example). So, why are they used everywhere?
TL;DR: You have to do something to accept a document; a signature is often used because it is simple and permanent; signature alone is often not enough (e.g. wills); claiming a false signature annuls the contract for both parties and you cannot keep the accrued benefits. Signing something means you accept it and it becomes legally binding. Many things can become binding without signature (including your usage of this website) and signatures alone are not considered trustworthy in many circumstances. Important documents (e.g. wills, marriages, real estate transactions) in many jurisdictions require a public official (notaries, marriage commissioners etc.) or a trustworthy person (lawyers, doctors, professional engineers, etc.), who will often require rigourous identification documents, and/or witnesses to be involved for the documents to be legally effective. Some high-value commercial transactions will also involve witnesses for signature, or require witnesses for executions of certain articles. Otherwise I can always claim that I didn't really sign that document when it becomes convenient for me. You can and people do. Then the parties go to court or other dispute resolution mechanism, and the judge will consider all relevant evidences to decide (often on a balance of probabilities, i.e. more likely than not) if you consented to a document. Particularly, &quot;when it becomes convenient for me&quot; is often after some elements of the contract having been executed, which is evidence in favour of the existence of the contract and nonexistence of a contract removes obligations and rights for both supposed parties, as such the executed part could be undone. If for a sales contract the other party has sent you a computer, you cannot claim that you did not sign that contract and keep the computer they sent. Without the contract, the computer is not rightfully yours. Also, claiming false statements for benefit or under oath is fraud/perjury and can be criminally prosecuted. So, why are they used everywhere? You have to do something to affirm your consent to a document. It is symbolic but symbolic does not mean meaningless and a symbol of your consent is often desirable. A signature is simple and: affirmative of your intention, unlike a simple visual inspection of document (perhaps eventually someone will argue your eye movement can be used, e.g. for VR) permanent, unlike oral declarations (which can still be legally valid, even if hard to prove)1 which is enough for most purposes. As a bonus, it is also somewhat unique and can be compared to certain extent. For purposes demanding higher level of confidence, ID documents can be demanded and more complex procedures (e.g. with notaries and witnesses) can be undertaken. Of course, you could make an audio recording for oral declarations, but audio recorders were not commonly available and it would be too complicated if the entire contract is not read aloud in that recording.
What is the lawful implication of text enclosed within a (stroked) text box in a document? I have heard this means this text is left out of the contract, or possibly adds an exception to it. You are mistaken. The boxed language means that the notary public who authenticates the document has liability only if an imposter signs the contract, not for anything else in the contract. The liability of the person signing the contract is not affected by the boxed language. For example, suppose that someone purporting to be Fred signs an affidavit of Fred in a real estate transaction that falsely states that the real estate is free of toxic waste when the person signing it knows that it is actually a toxic waste burial site. If the affidavit that Martin, a notary public, notarizes is actually signed by Jane, then Martin and Jane both have liability to anyone harmed by the fact that the buyer in the real estate transaction believed that the affidavit was signed by Fred when it was not. But, if the affidavit is actually signed by Fred, then Fred may have liability to someone harmed by the fact that the affidavit was false, but Martin will not have liability for notarizing Fred's signature. This is the default rule of U.S. law in any case, so the boxed language doesn't actually have any legal effect. The boxed language is probably present to alert people, such as people from Latin America or Europe, who are familiar with a legal regime in which a notary public has a more expansive set of responsibilities than a notary public does in the U.S.
The standard of care to determine documents are accurate varies. For example, in an ordinary notarized document, notarizing the signature of an imposter will ordinarily only impose liability on the notary for harm caused by the fraudulent imposter signing, if the notary is negligent, i.e. fails to use the reasonable care of a similarly situated notary. But, suppose that instead of a notary, the imposter uses a fake ID to get a bank to confirm his identity as part of a &quot;guaranteed signature&quot;, which is a parallel system of confirming people's identities arising from an industry organization and mostly used to confirm identity in life insurance payouts and other non-probate transfers (e.g. pay on death bank accounts). In the bank that guarantees the signature is duped, the bank has strict liability without regard to fault to the party that is harmed by the imposter's bad signature. In the case of fake signatures on checks, there is an elaborate web of statutes in Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code and some related federal regulations, but basically, it boils down to the harm from a forged check falling on the person who dealt most closely with the imposter. The standard for a Fake IDs used to get alcohol is particularly tricky because rather than flowing from a common law rule, it usually depends upon the exact language of a liquor regulation statute and related regulations, so it is often non-uniform. There is not a general rule governing this situation and that situation is very common in American law. More often than not, you can not determine the correct answer to a legal question by simply applying a general rule to a new situation. Law is not physics.
Copyright The © copyright symbol (or equivalently the word &quot;copyright&quot; or the abbreviation &quot;copyr&quot;, the actual symbol does not have to be used and is an abbreviation itself, or ℗ for a sound recording copyright) is used exclusively to claim copyright for yourself. If the copyright holder fails to do so, the copyright holder loses certain rights. Specifically, notice makes it much harder for a defendant to establish that that the alleged infringer-defendant is an &quot;innocent infringer&quot; and thereby is subject to a much lower minimum on statutory damages. Trademarks and Service Marks A trademark holder also secures certain rights by putting people on notice of the existence of a claim of trademark with the appropriate symbol (® if it is registered trademark or service mark, and tm for trademark or sm for service mark, if it is not a principle register mark under the Lanham Act). The various trademark symbols when used by a third party are being used in a circumstance when the third party isn't using it to sell the trademarked good in a manner that acknowledges that the trademark belongs to someone else and is protected in much the same way that an academic might footnote an idea or quotation to attribute that idea or quotation to someone else. Aside from the academic/journalistic honesty idea of acknowledging and attributing something that is not yours to someone else, it could also protect you from a trademark dilution lawsuit. If a trademark is used without attribution as a generic term for everything in the same class of goods that the goods sold under the trademark belongs to, it will become diluted and come to have only the general meaning of something belonging to that class of goods and not the specific secondary meaning associated with a trademark of a particular good within that class which is sold by the trademark owner. For example, if everyone started using the word &quot;Nike&quot; without a trademark symbol to refer to running shoes even if they weren't made by the Nike company, the trademark &quot;Nike&quot; would become diluted and no longer be protected by the law. But, the Nike company can nip that process in the bud by bringing anti-dilution suits against people who use the term in the general sense rather than to refer only to goods made by them. When you acknowledge with a trademark symbol that the right to use the name to sell goods is limited to them selling their goods, you are weakening the case that someone who wanted to bring an anti-dilution suit against you would have and clarifying that you are using it to refer to their goods (which is proper) rather than to sell goods which are not theirs (which is improper).
I think the officer is probably lying, not just mistaken, but they are not required to always be truthful. In addition to the law against possessing ID with intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any crime, it is also against the law to be knowingly in possession of a stolen credit card, or any other property. An example of a strict-liability possession crime, which the officer knows of, is that it is a crime to possess heroin, period. I am skeptical that the officer actually believes that there is a law making it a crime to be in possession of a credit card with permission, and suspect that he thinks it is stolen.
"Acknowledged" is fine. There is no "preferable" substitute with which to prefix your signature. As a precaution, never leave too much space between the end of clauses and your signature, lest another clause later on gets slid in without your consent (a public institution is unlikely to incur such misconduct, though). Also, always be sure to ask for a copy of the contract/agreement you sign.
Why is this reply not considered an agreement to sell the company? Because a sender's opportunism regarding the bizarre contents of the autoreply preclude a finding that there is a meeting of the minds. Could someone get out of a contract by proving that their email agreeing to it (e.g., &quot;Yes, I agree to the contract&quot;) was an autoreply? It mostly depends on the element of authorization to set up the autoreply that way. If the person who wrote the autoreply was authorized by the user of the email account to set it up that way, the contract binds the user. This form of blind and reckless formation of contracts is an extreme scenario of Restatement (Second) of Contracts at §154(b). The contract might be null and void as unreasonable, contrary to public policy, and/or on other grounds. But a wide range of scenarios would fall short of warranting a nullification of the contract. (Disclaimer: I am affiliated with the linked site.)
In such a case the person who bypasses the terms knows that use of the site is conditioned on agreement to the terms, and has taken an explicit action to continue past the terms and use the site. I suspect that if a dispute were to arise where this is relevant, it would be held that taking such action was legally equivalent to clicking "I agree". But I don't know of any court case on this point, and i can't be sure what a court would do. If having intentionally bypassed the terms, such a person tried to raise his or her lack of consent to the terms as a defense to some obligation imposed by those terms, such equitable concepts as "unclean hands" and estoppel might be raised, since such a person, in effect, leads the other party, the site owner, to believe that s/he has accepted the terms, I suspect that such a person will be treated as having accepted them. If this becomes at all common, I suppose that the designers of such sites will in future store a record of such consent being given, and not allow the user to proceed unless it has been.