

Ask YC: How do I store online contracts? - mwerty

Our site has a component where certain people sign up for accounts and get paid. I'm planning to do the contract online.<p>Googling keeps getting links to sample legal agreements, etc.<p>I'm concerned about how I store the contract &#38; proof of signature. Does anyone have any pointers for storage/format of electronic legal documents?<p>Much appreciated.
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olefoo
What sort of contracts? In what jurisdiction? And for what purpose?

[The ABA guidelines are one place to start
looking](<http://www.abanet.org/scitech/ec/isc/dsg-tutorial.html>).

If I were doing it I would save the actual contract portion of things as a
text file that includes (text of agreement, HMAC of the text, signed HMAC,
public key of the signer) note that including the public key of the signer in
no way guarantees the authenticity of the signer; it's there purely as a
sanity check, since if you can't decrypt the signed hmac with the provided
public key and match the original hmac (or the derived hmac) the document is
invalid.

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mwerty
Thanks for the link. I'm looking at it now.

> What sort of contracts?

I'm not sure how to answer this. It's basically an agreement saying we'll pay
the authors X% of the proceeds from book sales every month.

We are a Delaware C corp.

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olefoo
Find a lawyer for the product team; not your corporate counsel, but someone
whose sole responsibility is advising you on your contracts and recordkeeping
requirements. From the sound of it someone who has experience in the
publishing industry who has both written contracts and litigated disputes
involving revenue sharing.

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bigtoga
I have to wonder why you are doing this - are you really planning on having so
many authors that you need a technical solution for this right now? Massive
book publishers need that sort of thing but for a startup it seems unnecessary
and a luxury. email the contracts in .pdf form, have them sign and return two
copies, then mail one copy back to them.

I would just worry that you'll spend 40 hours developing a solution that will
save you 5 hours a year.

~~~
mwerty
Good point. I'm inclined to agree with you now. However, if the answer was
something quick and easy, I would have done it.

