> Because the document at that link can change.

The document at the link is a PDF, so the "the document is changeable" problem could be addressed by downloading the PDF and attaching it to the email agreement to serve as the record copy.

TFA also points out that the document is at the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://waypointnda.com/3.0.0

Why not just include the contract in the email then? It's just text right? Three's no special legal meaning to the markup.

> Why not just include the contract in the email then?

One of the advantages of a fixed reference document is that, apart from confirming that you have that document, you don't have to read it to know what it says — and to have a sufficient degree of comfort that the other side isn't trying to sneak something past you.

In contrast, if Party A (or its lawyer) copies and pastes the contents of a reference document into an email, then Party B will have to read the thing, which will take time and, if a lawyer is involved, cost money in legal fees.

An analog that comes to mind is the INCOTERMS rules for shipping goods: If you agree that the goods will be shipped DDP (Delivered Duty Paid), or EXW (Ex Works), or whatever, then you know what you're getting, without having to read the rule again to be sure the other party isn't trying to slip something in on you.

Another analogy is arbitration: If you agree to the American Arbitration Association's rules for commercial arbitration, then all concerned can go to the AAA Website to get a reference copy.

I see your point here, but I'd counter that it's technologically trivial to check that the text matches a reference. If you already have a copy of the contract that you've read and agreed to, and this email claims to have included the same contract in a standard form, then nobody needs to sit down and read the thing.

> it's technologically trivial to check that the text [of an email] matches a reference

Remember who we're talking about here: Lawyers and business people — too many of whom don't even know how to use Microsoft Word "properly." [0]

(You have no idea how many contract drafts I review in Word where the drafter used 'Normal' style for everything and just bold-faced the headings; used blank lines to put spacing between paragraphs; and didn't know how to do automatic paragraph numbering.)

[0] Obligatory link to the famous comment about Dropbox's launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Why are pdfs any more secure than a txt file, other than the editing being more obnoxious in the case of pdfs?

Hard-copy documents can be fraudulently altered after signature too. The question is, how much more burden do you want to impose on the parties to address the infinitesimal fraction of cases where that kind of fraud might be involved.

EDIT: Each party presumably will have email records with the PDF attachment — and if the attachments don't agree, then the parties' lawyers will be busy. But again, how likely is that to happen, and how much time and money do you want to spend to prevent it? At some point you hit diminishing returns (and OCD behavior).

This reminded me of a great talk (in German) by David Kriesel about scanners not scanning correctly but replacing letters and numbers because of pattern matching (if I remember correctly).

It was a really great talk. Not sure if there is an English version somewhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0

> Not sure if there is an English version somewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0

Seems to be: https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6558_-_de_-_saal_g_-_201412282...

Direct: https://cdn.media.ccc.de/congress/2014/h264-hd/31c3-6558-de-...

Which has german/english dual audio, but defaults to german (so presumably google ruined the english track on upload). If your video player doesn't support picking audio, you can probably fiddle with ffmpeg to strip out the german track.

>TFA also points out that the document is at the Internet Archive

IME it seems to be trivially easy to have things removed from the Internet Archive.

>How can I exclude or remove my site's pages from the Wayback Machine?

>You can send an email request for us to review to [email protected] with the URL (web address) in the text of your message.

https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004651732-Usin...

It's not trivial. Archive.org intentionally makes it an annoying process to either have material removed or excluded from their index/ing. You also must own and control the domain in question where the content is located, which nullifies the premise here (waypointnda.com is owned by someone else).

It used to be trivial to hide existing content in their index from being viewable (for your domains). They entirely changed that a number of years ago.

A paper contract can easily change as well. Ultimately it just comes down to people telling the truth in court, supported by evidence. You'd be surprised how often legal disputes come down to this - but people tend to be honest about these things, because fraud is a tough line to cross, and fraud on the court is quite another.

Preventing a web page from changing requires continuous significant effort. Changing a paper contract requires significant effort, unless you just, you know, lose it, or drop it in the gutter, or something.

Just print the web page and you have equivalent reassurance.

Yes, if what the parties are looking at to sign is the printed web page. But we're commenting on an article about signing contracts via email. If they each print the web page separately, they may print out different versions of it. A more effective measure would be to send the contract in the email in some kind of self-contained format such as PDF or plain text.

What would github for lawyers be? I think all you'd need is lawyers using github!

You mean kinda like https://github.com/kemitchell?