Authenticity in e-commerce

In e-commerce, the issue that is currently attracting most attention is that of verifying the identity
and authority of the (virtual) person at the other end of the wire. The technical perspective of this
is mostly about electronic signatures, cryptography, secure authentication servers, and that kind
of stuff.  Important, but not the whole story.

The legalistic/risk perspective focuses on the logical and practical possibility of repudiation -
what if the person denies signing?, what if the board denies that the person had the authority to
sign? - and the consequent commercial/legal exposure.  Again important, but again not the whole
story.