Top 10 tips for keeping your website legal

A week ago, we brought you 10 handy hints for ensuring your website gives customers the experience they deserve, courtesy of web design guru Jakob Nielsen. But even the most popular website is a liability if it breaks the law.

So here are the top 10 legal tips, as described by Nigel Miller, a partner with law firm Fox Williams.

1. If you don't own it, don't use it
You must own or have licence rights to use all elements of the website. This should include graphics, images, text, video and sound. Intellectual property created by an outsourced developer may not belong to the client until there has been a specific assignment of rights.

Particular care should be taken with the meta tags set up on your site which may divert traffic from other sites. This could be construed as passing yourself off as another company.

2. If you own it, protect it
Protect your intellectual property rights. Register trademarks. Think about patenting business methods. Make sure no one is squatting your brand on a similar domain name.

Print a copyright statement on the site to advise others what they are and aren't allowed to do with your content.

3. Mind your Ts and Cs
Protect yourself by limiting your liabilities in the Terms and Conditions of use of your site. You may want to exclude certain people on the basis of geographical location or age for example.

If you allow people to post comments on your site, remind them they may be liable for defamation of character.

4. Respect other people's personal data
The Data Protection Act sets out how you may display customers' and users' personal and financial data. Serious breaches of these regulations could result in a fine.

5. Keep your distance
If you're in B2C, make sure you comply with Distance Selling regulations, which came into force on 31 October 2000. Consumers who buy goods and services online are entitled to certain information to be made freely available, such as the physical address of the supplier, the duration of any services bought and the terms and conditions of cancellation procedures. This information must be available to the consumer in a 'durable form of information', ie. an email is acceptable, putting it on a web page isn't.

These regulations also give the consumer the right to cancel an order any time up to three months after it has been made if this information has not been provided correctly.

6. Stay in the frame
There may be legal problems with framing and deep linking, especially if links made into other websites cause commercial damage. If your links bypass security checks or drive traffic behind pages, which are used to get advertising revenue, you could be held liable for damages.

7. Take care crossing borders
Different countries have different laws protecting consumers, privacy and intellectual property. Make sure you are familiar with the commercial regulations in the countries where you sell goods and services online, as an ignorance of them will not protect you from prosecution.

8. Don't run into developmental problems
Get a website development and support agreement which establishes intellectual property rights, performance criteria, liabilities and payments.

9. Stick to the trail
Save copies of the site regularly especially if you change it often, in case you need them as evidence. If someone threatens you with prosecution, you can refer back to your audit trail to build your defence.

10. Security begins at home
Make sure you comply with employee regulations of data protection and make sure they comply with liabilities concerning libel and sexual, racial harassment via email etc.