Subject: RE: [Asrg] Giving Public Notice ....

From: "Doug Phillips" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 02:03:16 -0500

I wasn't making an argument, just pointing out that (contrary to what was 
stated in the prior post) U.S. federal law specifically states that a 
message is not prevented from being considered binding just because no human 
ever sees it.

It's also true that the E-Sign Act requires that the action of an electronic 
agent, to be covered by this provision, must be "legally attributable to the 
person to be bound."  So (presumably) you would need to get the person at 
some point to agree to be bound by the actions of the agent.  Once that 
happens, the agent can bind without further human participation.

 > >I'm no lawyer, but it is hard to understand how a message which no
 > >human will ever see could be considered binding on the people who
 > >operate the
 > company.
 >
 > Actually, the federal E-Sign Act (enacted in 2000) provides
 > that a contract
 > may not be denied legal effect because it was created by one or more
 > electronic agents (computer programs designed to act
 > independently without
 > contemporaneous human participation).

The point is not whether or not a "contract" can be in electronic form (I
agree this is possible) but whether two people can enter into a contract
when only one of them is aware of its existence.  The answer, I think, is
no.

Your argument, if I understand it correctly, is that a mail server can enter
into legal agreements on its owner's behalf without his prior knowledge.
This seems... problematic.

-J

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From: Hadmut Danisch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:25:54 -0800

On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 02:03:16AM -0500, Doug Phillips wrote:
> message is not prevented from being considered binding just because no 
> human ever sees it.

Under german law, a message can't be binding if it has not been
sent and received by both a 'person'. Law distinguishes between
'natural' persons (=humans) and 'juristical' persons (=companies, 
associations, etc.) which also involves a human. Machines can't
have contracts under german law.

Hadmut