Will Online Consent Be Effective?

Dear Rich: I work for an organization that runs conferences and publishes academic papers under an "open access" policy. We require that all authors sign and return a consent form permitting us to post online their paper, speech video, and/or slide deck after a conference takes place. If we placed the consent form online and asked them to enter their initials in a text field and click to indicate their approval, would it be legally valid and protect us? Yes it would, as we explain in this video and article.