how effective are NDA, and hitting the I agree button before signing up for something, I mean will stuff like this go through in court? Any one know much about laws pertaining to the web?
If you are in the US, the gorverning law is the US ESign Act of 2000. The Uniform Electronic Transaction Act of 1999 was sign by 46 states, but the language in both laws is essentially the same. They make certain actions as legally binding as a signature. Do a Google search for "electronic signature" with or without the quotes.
well how effective is the I agree button, like say someone had to read a nda before hitting a sign up button, it says by hitting this button you agree that you have read the tos, and nda? Would that fly in court?
Submit buttons are recognized in some cases. However, because of the nature of the page you're thinking of, I would add a "I have read and understand this document and agree to the terms of the contract." checkbox (the wording should be close to that, but doesn't need to be exact). Make the page so they cannot use the submit button until after they check the box. By adding a second layer where they must take an action, you will make the form more defensible. The submit button by itself is recognized by courts for things such as signing up for a service. In this situation, I would take the extra step (maybe even add a field for name and one for email that are required to submit). The extra step(s) will make it less likely if you do go to court that some judge with a more narrow view of the statutes will find against you if some idiot tries to say "I accidentally hit the enter key and didn't mean to agree to this".
Prove that the person who infringed on the NDA is the same person as the person who accessed the page. Good luck with that. If you can match up the IP, you have to be able to prove that they were using that IP at that time. You can prove that? Great. Now prove that someone else using the same PC wasn't the person who clicked on the Agree button. It might be winnable, but it would be a lot of work. I just e-mail the NDA and have them fax it back signed with a copy of their driver's license and mail me the original back.
The laws governing the electronic signature actually work in the other direction. A person challenging the signature has to prove it wasn't him/her.
for example you can add a field saying, "please type your full name here to confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to the terms and conditions."
That's the idea devin. A simple submit button is good enough in most cases, and possibly this one too. But I think the extra step will make it more substantial.
So I sign you up for a service that costs a million dollars, they try to collect the money and the burden of proof is on you to prove that you don't owe them the million dollars? I'd like to see a few court cases where this has been upheld. A real electronic signature, maybe, but the simple act of hitting a submit button? I think not.