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[bauer]

As have been discussed in several threads, most of us agree that having contracts when doing work for someone else (and when having someone work for you) is essential. Even if it might be impossible to sue someone if they break it, it serves as a good documentation for what has been agreed on.

Now I'm wondering if there are any good solutions for doing digital contracts? If I'm for example composing music for a developer in Australia, I dont want to send a paper contract all the way over there. I guess the main question is, how to sign a digital contract? At my day job we print the documents, sign it by hand, scan it and mail it back, which feels a bit overkill for smaller projects.

Any good solutions out there? 

[Nix]

I signed a digital contract once. I printed out a pdf, signed it, scanned the signed copy, and emailed it back. The contract included a clause saying that the digital copy was to be treated as the original. I have absolutely no idea who legally sound this was, but it seemed alright.

[bauer]

Yea but that involves printing and scanning which is what I'd like to get rid of. I'd like it to be 100% digital if possible.

[Nix]

Oh, I guess I just repeated what you said in your original post. I really don't know what's required by law, especially when it's international, but you could probably sign it in photoshop with a tablet, or re-use a scanned signature "stamp."

AFAICT, physically signing a contract is not required by law, but is the hardest to dispute and so is the most common form of acceptance. An email with a typed message of acceptance would probably be covered (but would be easy to deny). Anyone writing up (or even signing) contracts ought to read this: www.cisg.law.pace.edu/cisg/text/treaty.html it isn't terribly dense

Article 11 applies to this specific question:

"A contract of sale need not be concluded in or evidenced by writing and is not subject to any other requirement as to form. It may be proved by any means, including witnesses."

[braindigitalis]

From what i remember, in the EU a digitally signed email can be used as agreement of a contract.

I never looked into this too deeply so you think it applies to you you should research it

[bateleur]

What you've got to remember before you get too excited about signatures and legal positions is that if your contractor is in another country you are never actually going to sue them. Even if they're in the same country it's in most cases very, very unlikely that you'd really want to do this (if you think that you might, I'm betting you've never been involved in a legal battle).

And if for whatever reason (the above being mine) you decide you don't need your contract to be a strict legal document, it's just a question of making both sides' obligations explicit and being clear about when an agreement has been finalised. Email is fine for that.

[jotapeh]

As bateleur said you will probably never intitiate legal action, so don't sweat the contract.

Do protect yourself however (within reason) from getting ripped off. Require a deposit, withold some portion of the delivery until final payment, something like that.

Often even if you get ripped off (eg someone walks away with your product and doesn't pay you) it's far too expensive to bother with legal action of any kind and they'll get away scot free.

[Hangedman]

The main reason for a contract, i think, in informal business dealings like this, is just to try your best to allay everyone's concerns and establish a bit of trust, and state your assumed solutions to certain concerns clearly.

More of a transliteration of a verbal agreement than a proper contract

[bauer]

Thanks for the great replies, much appreciated! 

I completely agree with you that these contracts won't provide any real protection, i.e I don't expect to be able to sue anyone. I'm rather thinking that if the other party accepts to do something a bit more "real" than just something based on loose e-mail communication, that might give a hint that they are more trustworthy and that there is a bigger chance that they will follow through with their part of the job. I'll check out signed emails more in detail, it sounds quite close to what I'm looking for, basically something between printing, signing, scanning & sending back (too much hassle) and just regular mail (too loose).

In the end I guess the solution is not about actual protection, but more about testing the other party's trustworthyness. Another option is also as suggested to not send the final work until the payment has arrived etc, or in the case of music send tracks with inserted "logo samples" which makes the tracks unusable in a commercial game. I don't really like doing that though, I'd rather setup a trust relationship at the start. Maybe this thread should change from discussing contracts to discussing how to quickly build up trust with a new developer/contractor?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i use entirely physical contracts, using digital ones would feel like cheating to me, cause digital stuff is altered so easily

[BubblePipeMedia]

You know, I wrote a nice long response, but it somehow got lost so here is the short version. It's good to have an agreement, I think the scanning method is legally binding, I do it often, but sometimes I just do with a good outline because some indie developers are afraid of the word 'contract' (though I'm usually suspicious of said companies).

[bauer]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

I think the conclusion is basically that it's better to focus on relying on trust than on legalities in smaller projects. Both by checking previous work by the other party, maybe asking a previous client of theirs what they think, and also by being careful not to give away all of the work done before having some kind of security. Though actually having the requirements/terms for each party written down properly helps a lot!

[Craig Stern]

i use entirely physical contracts, using digital ones would feel like cheating to me, cause digital stuff is altered so easily

What's to stop someone from scanning your physical contract and altering it? What is to stop you from printing out a physical copy of your digital contract?

I actually feel safer having a time-stamped digital copy of the contract available on my email server--it's essentially like having a neutral, authoritative third party on hand at all times to provide the original document.

[iocat]

The rules differ in terms of what is acceptable by country, but in the US a secure digital signature counts. DocuSign is really popular for this (http://www.docusign.com/). There is a free version which should include everything you need for managing digital signatures. It's very good, I've used it before. It has kind of a crappy web interface, but the signing experience is good, and both people end up with a copy of the contract.

Even if you can't/won't enforce the penalty clauses of a contract, getting the scope of work written down in language both parties agree to is a pretty good exercise IMHO.

[Evan Balster]

Cryptographic signing is actually a really solid system (much more so than physical media) as long as it's secured against the "birthday attack" and the keys are kept safe.