Is Your Web Presence Legally Compliant?
If you have an online presence, the reality is that it is constantly being regulated. The legal scrutiny of websites is becoming more rigorous and more frequent all of the time.
With that said, you need to understand that your website will continue to face more and more legal liability as time goes on. It is a very good idea to give your website a legal examination and to make sure that it is updated properly now.
There are several things that you can check on to make sure that your website is compliant from a legal perspective.
If you have other resellers, affiliates or bloggers promote your offerings, you are considered an advertiser according to the FTC guidelines.
On the other hand, if you are asked to become a reseller, affiliate or blogger for other websites, you are considered an endorser according to the FTC guidelines.
In simple terms, according to the FTC, advertisers are expected to provide training and guidance to endorsers regarding the guidelines and liability. Endorsers are expected to disclose their relationships with the advertisers.
- Copyright notice: If you use content that is owned by someone other than you, you must have a copyright symbol after the content, the year of publication, the copyright owner’s name and “All rights reserved worldwide.” It is very important to give the proper attribution to the copyright owner.
- Blogs: If your website has a blog, there is a potential for other people to post content on your website that is an infringement of the copyrighted materials (for example, text, video links, graphic images). Under copyright law, you would be responsible for the infringement even if you were not aware of the copyright situation with the content that others have posted on your website. Your liability might be serious.
- Security of data: Technology and security practices are constantly evolving. You, as a business owner, are responsible for maintaining appropriate and reasonable data security measures, as dictated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). You need to be sure to that your security has been updated recently and continues to be updated on a regular basis.
- The collection, use and sharing of personal information: The way in which you market your business determines the types of personal information that you collect, how you make use of it and the way in which you share it. It is very important to make sure that your Privacy Policy reflects your actual practices with regard to personal information. Make sure that you review your Privacy Policy as necessary and revise it to reflect the evolution in your business that occurs.
- Service providers: If your external service providers (Web hosting service, search engine optimization, website developer, etc) have access to the internals of your website server and your databases that archive personal information, they need to be covered by a confidentiality agreement.
- FTC guidelines: Because the FTC was concerned over false advertising on the Internet, it released new guidelines that explain how existing laws on endorsements and testimonials used in online advertising will be interpreted.
If you have other resellers, affiliates or bloggers promote your offerings, you are considered an advertiser according to the FTC guidelines.
On the other hand, if you are asked to become a reseller, affiliate or blogger for other websites, you are considered an endorser according to the FTC guidelines.
In simple terms, according to the FTC, advertisers are expected to provide training and guidance to endorsers regarding the guidelines and liability. Endorsers are expected to disclose their relationships with the advertisers.
If you are about to have a website developed or you are developing it yourself, you need to make sure that it includes the following:
- FTC guides disclosure policy
- Legal page
- Terms of use
- Privacy policy
- Service provider privacy-security agreement
- Customer agreement
Summary
Please note that the checklists discussed here are valuable but do not represent all of the legal points that need to be taken into consideration. However, they are some of the most important points and adhering to them will protect your website and, subsequently, your business.
It is essential to be legally compliant if you wish to avoid liability in an environment that is so highly regulated.
We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.
That was very clear and informative Carol. Thank you.
Well-written article on web compliance. Respecting your customers (or followers) privacy and security should be taken very seriously!
Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!
Carolyn, this topic is very timely and has many good points. I'm sharing with my facebook account to reference again when time permits. As a web designer, I have an indemnity statement for copyright infringement included on all website design proposals and I require a signature and a date by the customer prior to beginning the project. Also, it seems the entire subject of copyright is popping up more and more, and I take a position to help my customers to avoid any legal issues by questioning their material, photos, images, etc. Although there were no legal impacts and the issue was reversed, I was recently party to a situation that involved a Google Copyright Infringement. Google takes the position that you are guilty until proven innocent, so for about 3 months my customers URLs were blocked from showing up in the results. Again, copyright an important consideration and I applaud you for tackling this subject matter in laymans terms. Thanks Carolyn!
Great article. Here is another "legal" consideration for Social Media.
As more small-medium sized corporations jump onto the social media bandwagon, the line between the business entity and the individual profiles (business owners) become somewhat blurry. Could this overlap create foundation to show that a corporation/LLC is still treating itself as a sole-proprietor and by so doing, put the corporate veil (thus personal assets) at risk?
Let me phrase the question another way. When litigating against corporations or LLCs, an attorney will attempt to pierce the corporate veil. The implications are, of course, losing tax advantages and loss of PERSONAL asset protection. So, the goal of the attorney is to prove that a small business is really not following corporate/LLC rules thereby nullifying any benefit derived from the corporate/LLC. My question is: could/would an attorney use social media, and the mingling of corporate/LLCs’ owners’ profiles with company pages, to pierce the corporate veil?
I've asked this question on our blog. Would love to get anyone's feedback and thoughts.
http://laughlinusa.com/blog/