No matter what the kind of business that you are in and products that you sell; if you have a web site, you need to be aware and able to address all the legal issues that you could be privy to in a court of law. These comprise of various types of digitized content such as graphics, text, images, music and coding.  

 

Web site owners have to assume that all content is protected ether by copyright or moral rights.  

 

Copyright protection disallows its inclusion in another web site without that business owner’s permission.  

 

Moral rights require the author to be attributed and that the work should not be significantly modified without the business owner’s permission.  

 

These clearances can take form of a license or an assignment of copyright from a relevant rights holder. These include a third-party web site designer, photographer, journalist or two or more rights-holding organizations such as in the most difficult case of music.  

 

In addition to the aforementioned, you must ensure that the content on your web site satisfies other requirements such as:  

• Using the registered trademark of a third party as part of your web site meta data will constitute trademark infringement. Even straight-forward references on a web site to a third-party’s trademark can be equivalent to as well.
  
• Hypertext linking, particularly by means of deep linking or framing to third-party web sites without the consent of those web sites, should be avoided.
  
• Misleading price indications such as incurring penalties when online prices for selling products have not been updated.
  
• Incorrect product descriptions, where inaccurate statements are made as to the quantity, size and fitness for purpose or performance of goods that a customer can buy can also cause repercussions.  

As well as guarding against infringement of third parties’ rights, it is important for business owners to include wording in the terms and conditions of their web sites that protects their own copyright and other rights. Usually this is done by showing the terms directly on the home page, linked from the home page or at the bottom of every other page on the web site.