Basic concept of electronic signature

An electronic signature, or e-signature, is any electronic means that indicates either that a person adopts the contents of an electronic message, or more broadly that the person who claims to have written a message is the one who wrote it (and that the message received is the one that was sent). By comparison, a signature is a stylized script associated with a person. In commerce and the law, a signature on a document is an indication that the person adopts the intentions recorded in the document. Both are comparable to a seal.
Increasingly, encrypted digital signatures are used in e-commerce and in regulatory filings as digital signatures are more secure than a simple generic electronic signature.

  Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 1999 on a Community framework for electronic signatures (OJ No L 13 p. 12 19/1/2000)

 Legal definitions

Various laws have been passed internationally to facilitate commerce by the use of electronic records and signatures in interstate and foreign commerce. The intent is to ensure the validity and legal effect of contracts entered into electronically. For instance,

PIPEDA definitions

(1) An electronic signature is "a signature that consists of one or more letters, characters, numbers or other symbols in digital form incorporated in, attached to or associated with an electronic document";

(2) A secure electronic signature is as an electronic signature that

(a) is unique to the person making the signature;

(b) the technology or process used to make the signature is under the sole control of the person making the signature;

(c) the technology or process can be used to identify the person using the technology or process; and

(d) the electronic signature can be linked with an electronic document in such a way that it can be used to determine whether the electronic document has been changed since the electronic signature was incorporated in, attached to or associated with the electronic document.

Controversial assumptions of electronic signature

Some web sites and software EULAs contain terms that assert that various electronic and other actions give rise to legally effective signatures. For example, a web page might announce that, by accessing the site at all, you have agreed to a certain set of terms and conditions. A software product might assert, in its packaging or on an early installation screen, that by using it you have agreed to licensing terms. These may or may not have been discernible prior to sale, and may or may not be completely displayed even at installation.
In regard to a prominent limitation typically imposed in EULAs: Such licenses often include such restrictions as a prohibition of reviewing the product for publication (electronic or otherwise) without prior permission of the publisher/distributor, or prohibition on studying the product (i.e., reverse engineering) for an otherwise lawful purpose such as producing data files in a compatible format. Some such claims would appear to be contrary to patent law (which requires public disclosure as a condition of granting a patent) or to copyright law which does the same for works available to the public, or to contract law which requires informed knowing assent to reasonable contract terms as a condition of enforceability in court. Only if all such covered matters are trade secrets would many such clauses appear sustainable, but even so a condition of trade secrecy is maintenance of the secret by the holder. This may not be met in the case of a widely distributed product offered for sale to anyone.

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