Re: E-signatures

From: "MindShift Design LLC" <admin@mindshiftdesign.com>

Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000

"Jiri Klouda" <jk@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> wrote in message
news:8rabu2$12c6$1@ns.felk.cvut.cz...
> Hi,
> I would like to remind interesting news. Since this Sunday e-signatures
> in US are legal. Czech laws should follow Very Soon (TM) and I hope that
> most of countries and especially EU will follow shortly.

As far as I'm aware, although they're legal, they're still thrashing out the
ways that they can be used and the format they'll take. It's accepted that
computer documents are admissable in court, but signatures can take many
forms. IIRC the US govt was talking about creating a proprietary swipecard
that would store your sig and that could be read by readers - sort of like
attaching your own PGP signature to web documents.

> Is there any lawyer out there? Do you think this could help to prevent
> multiplaying in massive multiplayer online games? In case you would find
> some way I would gladly use it in all my future games and I am sure
> that most of GMs would join me.

Nope. Not a lawyer, but someone who gets screwed by the US govt every chance
the can. E-sigs are a powerful new way to authenticate people, but the real
world applications for them are still a year or two away. I know that in the
US the real estate industry is looking to use them heavily to automate a lot
of the processing of the house buying process as our company is partners in
a venture with a real estate company that will be utilizing this eventually.
It has applications, but they need to be realized.

From a gaming perspective, perhaps this would be able to work like the new
thumbprint scanners for logging onto networks ? To log into your game
instead of entering your username and password, you use your E-sig and a
user name instead ?

> For players: In your place I would go to register your e-sig in case
> its legally binding in your country. I'm sure it will be handy...

It's probably going to take another 2-3 years for a worldwide standard to be
ratified... look to the ebook standard(s) that are currently being hashed
out.

> P.S.: I would say that E-sig could be better than the earlier concept
>       of 'security deposit' that you would lose in case of cheating.
>       I didn't mention it before? Well I didn't share most of my ideas
>       how to prevent multiplaying so far...

Do you mean like a global "black list" for gamers that's held at a central
point, just like the the way spammers and websites that screw users can be
blacklisted ?

--
Jason Paul McCartan - jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com
CEO/President
MindShift Design LLC
http://www.mindshiftdesign.com

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References

E-signatures
jk@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz (Jiri Klouda)
Mon, 02 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000