Re: Google adds JSON-LD support to Gmail

Shifting discussion to public-webpayments
+bcc: RDF WG, JSON-LD CG

On 05/16/2013 10:24 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> Manu, I'm curious as to the implications of one of these semantic 
> emails signed with either payswarm or S/MIME ... could they be 
> legally binding contracts?

In general, any electronic document signed with a digital signature can
be used as a legally binding contract as long as several basic
requirements are met.

At a minimum, the document has to be a legally valid contract, you have
to prove intent to enter into a contract by both parties, and the
digital signature must be strongly associated with a real-world identity.

Any PaySwarm authority operating in a country with a fairly modern legal
framework will have to gather Know Your Customer data. These
organizations can vouch for their customers (or be compelled via court
order to provide identifying information about a particular customer
under investigation).

We're thinking about extending the security vocabulary (used in
PaySwarm) to make these sorts of claims about your customer more easily
discoverable. Things such as: credit card verified, bank account
verified, email verified, phone verified, etc.

S/MIME wouldn't work unless it has this same sort of identity
prove-ability. Web Keys will hopefully have this sort of identity
prove-ability baked into the vocabulary/standard.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/

Received on Thursday, 16 May 2013 16:24:05 UTC