RE: [dss] Suggestion for new work - profile for visible signaures

[John Messing <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

I agree. Federal judges in the United States are requesting such a
feature for electronic orders being issued from their courts, and the
preference comes up in many other legal/commercial contexts.

John Messing
Law-on-Line, Inc.
5151 E. Broadway Blvd., Suite 1600
Tucson, AZ 85711
(520) 512-5432 (o)
(520) 512-5401 (f)
(520) 270-1953 (c)

American Bar Association Science & Technology Law Section Representative
to OASIS and LegalXML-OASIS
Chair, LegalXML-OASIS Member Section

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [dss] Suggestion for new work - profile for visible signaures
> From: "Uri Resnitzky" <Uri@arx.com>
> Date: Mon, February 19, 2007 3:07 pm
> To: "DSS TC List" <dss@lists.oasis-open.org>
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I would like to suggest that the DSS TC develop a new profile to handle
> visible signatures.
> 
> This profile will enable a client to submit a document to the server and
> ask that the document be signed after adding a signature field / block
> to a certain page in certain coordinates and dimensions. The signature
> block could have some text attributes displayed such as signer's name
> (taken from the signer certificate's Subject Common Name attribute for
> example), signature date/time, etc. In addition the signature block
> could have some graphic elements such as a graphical signature image
> held by the server in association with the signer's key, a company logo,
> etc. Additional features may include supporting multiple signature
> fields in the same document, sectional signatures, etc.
> 
> The main advantage of this profile would be in connection with document
> formats which natively support interactive visible digital signature
> fields. One such (non-XML) format is PDF (recently announced to be
> submitted as an ISO standard). Other formats may include the XML-based
> OASIS ODF and Microsoft OOXML, as well as non-XML formats such as TIFF,
> etc.
> 
> An interesting challenge would be to design the profile in a generic
> manner so that it can support as many features without being tied to any
> specific file type.
> 
> In my experience visual signatures (and especially graphical signature
> images) greatly enhance the user acceptance and usability of a digital
> signature system.
> 
> The profile can also cover auxiliary activities such as:
> 1. adding an empty signature field into a document (specifying at
> document/template design time where signature lines should be in the
> document, who should sign them, etc)
> 2. registering a graphical signature image to be associated with a
> certain signing key.
> 3. enumerating signature fields and extracting various attributes
> While not directly involved with the calculation or verification of a
> digital signature, these auxiliary activities are useful when building
> on overall solution for document signing. Of-course such activities can
> also be left aside to be specified as an additional profile or protocol.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> - Uri
> 
> Uri Resnitzky
> Chief Scientist
> ARX
> http://www.arx.com