I've always understood that the "confirm it electronically" method is limited to cases where the customer's statement of consent is obtained in paper (or some other non-electronic) form. When you boil as system like that down to the essentials, it becomes a redundancy--the customer signs a paper service agreement that says "I consent to electronic delivery of _____" and then the customer goes home or uses a handheld device to transmit a message that says "I confirm my consent to electronic delivery of ____". Essentially, ESIGN allows the business to obtain a courtest copy of the consent statement on paper.
Training manuals and other "plain language" or "understandable" restatements of legal/regulatory requirements are useful, but can never replace the words of the law/reg. Since ESIGN's enactment in 2000, the most common industry mistake has been to read the word "demonstrate" and understand it to mean "declare." Customers are required to sign off on many types of bank service agreements with boilerplate language "declaring" they received something, read something, or understood something. They don't have to prove it--just say it--and we file the signed document away in case a dispute arises. ESIGN requires proof--not merely a signed statement.
Think about ESIGN's "informed demonstrable consent" system like the DMV's system for issuing driver's licenses. That's the closest comparable process I've ever found. The "demonstration" part of the DMV process includes a driving test behind the wheel on the public highway. The examining officer doesn't sign off on your driver's license until s/he sees you operate the vehicle safely and in compliance with all traffic lights, signs, and markings encountered during the test drive. Transferring that same concept to ESIGN, you and the consumer don't get the license to substitute electrons for paper until you prove to each other (and possibly to some future regulator or judge) that it actually works. Allowing the consumer to simply declare (without a comprehensive test) that s/he has the hardware, software, and savvy, would be like asking DMV if you could just sign something in lieu of taking the driving test.
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...gone fishing.