Re: Legal signatures ramifications

[Peter Graham <psgraham@syr.edu>]

1.  I'm sure the lawyers, as usual, are being excessively conservative.  
I can't believe their interpretation (of "any copy" of the contract being
legal) is correct.  We've all distributed xeroxed copies of contracts
we've managed for years and never heard anything of this nor of the
putative dangers.  If such a modified contract were attempted to be
enforced it would show up as unauthoritative right away when compared with
signed originals, and would open the violator up to other charges.

2.  It would be trivial to provide these for visibility and have them
provably not authoritative.  For example: provide them as 80%-size PDFs
with additional marks on them that when copied or expanded would show the
result of size-change (a la safety lines on checks); or use a pattern
background; etc. etc.


> Janet Kaul sends the following inquiry:
>
>
> Apparently, by federal law, any facsimile of a contract with signatures is
> still a legal contract, and we could be held liable for someone who has a
> copy and somehow changes it.--

Peter Graham    Syracuse University Library    psgraham@syr.edu
Syracuse NY 13244-2010 315/443-5530 fax 315/443-2060 11/99nw4.4