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It's hard to
believe that anyone's website is completely unique –
especially when you realize just how many websites are
out there. But when you are a business and you want to
stay in business for a long time, you need to be
concerned about the legality of your site. Though there
are hundreds of different rules and laws about the
protection of business secrets, here are three simple
things you can do right now to protect your company and
your legal status.
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Plagiarism is
Avoidable
Everything that you include on your website needs to be
owned by you – that's the first right of being a legal
website. If you didn't write it or take a picture of it,
you can't put it on your website. That said, there are
gray areas to this rule because sometimes you can't find
the person who originally wrote something that you want
to use on your site and in other cases, you can't figure
out who took the pictures that you want to use. When
these cases happen, you will want to do everything in
your power to look for the source, but when it can't be
found, you need to be clear to your website users that
you are not the author or the owner. Create a line in
your website that says that images and articles that are
not credited are not meant to intentionally steal from
the author – those who know the author are encouraged to
tell you so that you may credit them.
Of course, it may just be easier to avoid using them
altogether.
If you're working with copywriters, it's never a bad
idea to have the text checked with plagiarism tools like
CopyScape. These online tools are free of charge up to a
point, but then only have a minimal fee for their use.
They will check the text on your site against the rest
of the internet to show you whether or not anything was
copied from another's text.
Everything Needs to be Copyrighted
When you have a business name and a business idea that
you want to keep for yourself, you need to make sure
that it's copyrighted BEFORE it goes on your website.
This way, you will be able to check it against other
copyrighted materials and know that you're the first one
to own the rights to using it. Copyright your ideas,
your site name, your business name, etc. While this
seems like a silly process, it can protect you in legal
matters, plus it lets your website look all the more
professional since you took the time to legalize every
detail.
Contact the copyright office at www.copyright.gov.
Your Terms and Conditions Page Can Help
With the help of other website or a lawyer, you will
want to create a Terms and Conditions page on your
website that will indicate how your site can be used and
how it can not be used. For example, you might want to
indicate the customer levels that you are targeting with
your website – over 18 years of age, children, etc. This
will help to give the website users the chance to see
who the site is directed to, while also allowing for
certain people to be excluded.
You will also want to create a set of rules about
customer comments if you have message boards or an open
blog with comments enabled. These commenters will need
to know that their comments can be removed if they are
inappropriate and if they are offensive, they might
incur legal ramifications.
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