On Apr 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, [email protected] wrote:
The law is a conservative, slow-moving, ponderous luddite at times.
Indeed so.
I don't believe a FAX is necessary unless the transactions are
"unilateral", meaning the parties involved don't have a prior written
agreement to abide by the Uniform Electronics Transaction Act (UETA).
Once there is a prior written agreement, such as is the case with all
checking accounts with banks, the electronic record (no matter how it
was produced or transmitted) carries the same force of law as any
other paper record. This is why banks no longer keep or return the
actual paper check, and why you can scan a check at a business and
complete the transaction without the physical paper check and
associated signature ever being reproduced as physical paper on the
bank's receiving end (as would be the case with a FAX).
It appears that for "one off" legal transactions, using a FAX machine
is easier than getting a valid signed written agreement prior to the
electronic transaction.
Since Bruce is involved with pharmacy business, I assume he knows
something about this subject related to signatures required on
prescriptions, but I would certainly think that having a prior written
agreement between a pharmacy and a doctor would preclude the need for
a FAX in preference to any other electronically generated document
that has legal "linkage" between the electronic signature and the
sending & receiving parties.
Perhaps the advantage of FAX is that it's an "integrated" solution
that for common transactions probably only requires pressing a single
button on a FAX machine, whereas the alternative of generating a
electronic file and sending it via email or by other network means
probably requires more steps on both ends of the transaction, and also
some prior standardization and integration of the software used on
both ends of the transaction.
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