How Your Website Could Be Breaking The Law
Following on from the recent article about plagiarism on the Web and libel and slander on the Web, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the other things webmasters often do that is illegal. As with all the articles referring to laws on this website the ideas come from original research but cannot be guaranteed. Also remember that laws vary from country to country.
It is also important to realise who is responsible for what is posted on your website. Firstly, the contributor of the comments is responsible. Secondly, the owner of the site is responsible and thirdly, the ISP or webhost can potentially be responsible.
First of all we should explore the more common abuses. The first is copyright theft.
Copyright Theft and Plagiarism
While these two have been grouped together, they are not always the same thing. Plagiarism refers to using the words or ideas of somebody else and passing them off as your own. Direct quoting without acknowledging the source is plagiarism. It is not limited, however, to direct copying. Using the ideas or original thoughts of somebody else without acknowledgement is also plagiarism. You can read a lot more about plagiarism in our plagiarism article.
Copyright theft usually refers to taking a creative idea of somebody else and reusing it for your own purposes. Examples would include using an image or video and posting them on your website without permission, either in the original or altered state. Note, however that there is a principle of “fair use.” As with everything this differs throughout the world but as a general example if you posted a corporate logo on a website along with a story about them, it is unlikely that the company would be able to sue you. There is an excellent article about Copyright Myths by Brad Templeton if you want to read more.
I don’t want this article to get stuck in legal jargon and defining legal terms, but copyright theft and plagiarism are without a doubt the two biggest offences committed on the internet. It is very easy to cut and paste the work of somebody else without giving credit and there are even special search engines that exist to detect plagiarism.
Posting Software
While this comes under copyright theft, posting downloads of other people’s software is so rife on the Internet it deserves a special mention. Beware of the definition of copyright theft. It will differ based on which country you are talking about. Hosting a copy of Microsoft Windows for download in the USA is most certainly illegal. If the website’s server was in Afghanistan, this would not be a crime as copyright laws are basically non-existant in Afghanistan.
Websites such as The Pirate Bay have exploited such copyright law loopholes and have previously looked to purchase the Principality of Sealand. They could host their servers there and be immune to copyright restrictions.
You should also be aware of free downloads that are taken from a non-free source. With very few exceptions this would contravene the original licence agreement. For example, if you purchased a WordPress template and distributed it to others for free, you would probably violate the agreement.
For such reasons, you should always be sure of ownership of any downloads hosted on your website. Any user contributed submissions should also be screened for any copyright violations.
Violating Terms and Conditions
It is the text that everybody agrees to but very few actually read. When you use practically any service or software, you must agree to the terms and conditions. When you sign up for a webhost, when you purchase Photoshop, when you use PHP or Apache and when you purchase forum software you must agree to the terms and conditions set out by the publishers.
For instance, say you download the latest PHP release and make some modifications to it. You then release it as PHPfoo. This would be a violation of the PHP licence as it makes it clear that any derivative of PHP cannot use “PHP” in its name.
In another example, you purchase a copy of vBulletin. You install it on two of your websites. This is a breach of the licence you agreed to as it only granted you permission to use one instance of the software on one domain or server.
Copying Designs
Two copies of a design. From pirated-sites.com
Again, technically covered under copyright theft, imitating a design deserves a special mention too. Legally speaking this is a very tricky subject even in countries with clear copyright laws. While stealing a logo or photograph is very easy to prove, copying a design is not. It is not uncommon for a designer to look at a website and feel that it is an imitation of their own. It is often difficult to prove it in court. For this reason it is best to contact the site owner directly. If this fails, contact their web host. They are often very keen to avoid any legal issues and most will give you the benefit of the doubt and remove the offending content. There are full details about how to deal with content theives on our plagiarism article.
Violating Accessibility Laws
The UK has the Disability Discrimination Act, USA has section 508, Ireland has the Disability Act 2005 and Canada has the Human Rights Act 1977. All of these laws include sections on accessibility of services for people with disabilities. They all include the Internet, although may not mention it specifically. The W3 maintains a page of links to the relevant discrimination laws for various countries.
The problem with most of these laws is that they were not written with the Web in mind, which means they are not very specific with what needs to be done to make a website accessible. They tend to include ambiguous clauses such as to ensure a website is not “unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services.” What is defined as a service is not clear either. It is unlikely that a website such as this one would be liable for prosecution. But a website for a cinema chain that requires the use of Flash to book tickets certainly would.
Prosecutions against organisations have been successful under the various laws. In 1999 a blind man called Bruce Maguire lodged a complaint against the website of the organisers of the Sydney Olympic Games. The complaint was upheld and the website was ordered to make changes. They failed to comply and were fined AU$20 000.
The W3 maintains a checklist of points to follow to ensure accessibility.
Security Breaches
Losing customer data or having it stolen from your servers is not only bad for business and customer confidence, it can lead to prosecution. TJK Companies Inc (the owner of TJ Maxx and TK Maxx in the UK), is currently the subject of several class action lawsuits after the details of 45.7 million debit and credit cards were stolen. It is unlikely the full extent of the breach will ever be known but it is regarded as the biggest data breach in history.
This is the main reason why very few online businesses process credit card information themselves. They leave it to a clearing service to do it.
Failure to Maintain a Privacy Policy
The 2003 California Online Privacy Protection Act is a law which requires any website that collects “personally identifiable information” to “conspicuously” post a privacy policy. The policy must describe the types of information that is collected, any methods that exist to alter that information and describe how users are notified of a change in the policy.
Although this law only applies in California similar laws are being prepared in other US states.
Sites that don’t comply will have 30 days to rectify the situation. You can view the full text of the law at this URL.
This article was designed to give you an overview of what actions can cause a website to break the law. It is not designed to scare you and always remember that what is illegal in one country may not be illegal in another. Now you know you have the chance to go back to your website and put things right that you have discovered may be wrong.
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There was a news report recently about a blogger who was sued by a major corporation for a few million dollars. That’s millions. All because the blogger didn’t follow the law.
Dugg.