> But alot of the discustion I saw said that, those agreements are > void with out the acctul signature and or verifiyable digital signature of > the authour.
Based on my experience with Political Science, this isn't actually true. The signing of a document is merely used as a way of demonstrating that this person had explicitly agreed to a contract. You can agree to be bound by a contract without signing anything at all (a verbal contract, or implied). For example, if you purchase something from a store with a 90-day return policy, they have contractually agreed to accept your return within 90 days, and neither of you signed anything. However, a signature is nice for when you're trying to prove in court that this person had agreed to the contract. The best way I could suggest dealing with this issue is just to have really good documentation, and witnesses of other builders who've submitted to the contract stating that everyone else who had been building there had agreed to the agreement, and that you have a copy of an email supposedly sent from this person. At that point the person can either claim that he never got the agreement or never agreed to it, or that you forged his version of the agreement. Basically it becomes your word against his word, but with a decent amount of circumstantial evidence, I can't see a judge awarding damages to the disgruntled builder. He may, by court order, request that the area be removed from the mud however. Of course, I am not a lawyer, I'm a Political Scientist. The agreement I have for my own mud has a clause for the removal of areas. Requests must be made in writing (email considered in writing), and time must be given so that the structure of the mud can be modified accordingly to safely remove the area. If the builder feels that we're not acting fast enough, it requests that we have 30 days from the second request to remove the area to remove it before legal action takes place. At that point if the area is still active, I figure its our fault for not having kept our part of the bargain. As a side note, no one likes to feel like their being taken advantage of. Work-for-hire is a concept I don't particularly like in the normal business world, and I personally have no desire to extend it to my hobbies. While you may legally be able to claim ownership of the work done by other people for your mud under a 'work-for-hire' type agreement, its really not good for morale amongst builders when they see someone being given legal responses to surpress their copyrights. But to each their own. -- Thomas Hughes
