As an online retailer, your responsibilities go beyond the usual product-driven responsibilities to your customers to provide a quality product at a fair price, fast shipping, reasonable return policy and so on.

To the extent that your site contains content that is produced by others, either on commission or in the form of user reviews, blogs, forum postings and so on, you are responsible for the appropriateness of that content.

WIPO and DMCA

In 1996, the World International Property Organization (WIPO) developed a treaty to normalize the rules for copyright and infringement globally. The United States implemented the WIPO directives through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998. That act placed significant requirements on Internet Service Providers to police their sites in order to block attempted copyright infringement.

You may be thinking that none of this has anything to do with you because you are not an ISP. However, although your site may not act as a bona fide ISP, if you provide users the opportunity to exchange views, download information and otherwise provide for transmission of material that you have not specifically authored, you are close enough to the definition to take action to protect yourself against any problems. That is where OCILLA comes in.

U.S. Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA)

OCILLA not only protects copyright owners but also provides a safe harbor for online service providers and site owners like you that may inadvertently become a party to a copyright infringement episode. OCILLA basically says that as long as you follow its guidelines for policing your site with respect to possible copyright violation, then you will not be held responsible if a copyright violation is found to have taken place on your site.

OCILLA requires that you:

- Do not have knowledge of infringement;

- Upon learning of infringement, remove offending material;

- Do not benefit from the presence of infringed material;

- Identify an agent, which can be you, to receive notification of possible infringement.

What you should do

First, establish a site use policy that prohibits the use of any copyright protected material from being used on the site, except under acceptable fair use terms.

Now that you have a site use policy, make your users read and agree to the policy before accessing the site by posting the policy in click-wrap form, i.e., forcing the user to open the policy and scroll to the bottom to click agreement. This certainly does not guarantee that the user has read the policy but it gives you a document that says that the user has agreed to the terms.

Actively police your site and encourage others to report any possible violations to you.

If you receive a report of possible copyright violation, investigate promptly. You can:

- Test the material through copyscape;

- Ask the poster to demonstrate that the material is genuine or to explain any strong resemblance to other available material.

Remove material in violation. Of course, if you do not believe that material in question violates copyright, you can choose to disagree and not remove the material. But, recognize that you may have to defend your position in court.

Take the good sense to establish some protective measures to be sure that your e-commerce business is not interrupted by avoidable problems.

Source verified wholesale UK wholesalers, dropshippers, dropship and dropshipping suppliers and importers now. Browse dropshippers by country: Wholesale French wholesalers and Wholesale German wholesalers.

[tags]copyright,copyright infringement,copyright violation,ecommerce,ocilla,wholesalers,dropshippers[/tags]

There has been a growing concern about the extent of data collection taking place on the Internet, oftentimes with little knowledge on the part of unsuspecting consumers.

Consumer rights and privacy advocacy groups in the U.S. have been calling for federal legislation to make the collection practices more transparent and provide consumers with clearer opportunities to opt out of these data collection procedures.

On July, 2009, a set of voluntary principles were endorsed by four major organizations, the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), plus the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB). The principles were set out in a forty-eight page publication titled, Self Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising.

- The Education Principle: calls for entities to provide consumer education about practices including the development of a web site devoted to the topic.

- The Transparency Principle: requires mechanisms for disclosing information about data collection practices.

- The Consumer Control Principle: calls for mechanisms to be put into place that allow a consumer to choose whether or not data is collected and whether or not it is passed onto other groups.

- The Data Security Principle: requires that entities provide reasonable security for collected information.

- The Material Change Principle: requires that entities inform consumers who have agreed to data collection if their policies change to become less restrictive.

- The Sensitive Information principle: recognizes that some information is more sensitive and must be treated differently. It calls for higher standards for information about children and about financial and medical information.

- The Accountability Principle: calls for all relevant entities to develop policies and procedures that operationalize the principles.

Enforcement mechanisms have not been worked out but the plan is to develop that component during the intervening time until the principles are supposed to be adopted in 2010.

Consumer advocates are basically seeing this effort as well-intentioned but essentially a fox guarding the henhouse solution that they believe will not be sufficient in terms of requirements, compliance and enforcement.

They are looking to Congress to pass comprehensive legislation with strong regulatory teeth instead. They anticipate that efforts at disclosure will look similar to the disclosure that is available today, buried in the fine print of a privacy statement that is available on a website but rarely looked at and so densely written as to be effectively incomprehensible.

They also feel that the information is too valuable for marketing groups to be willing to make it easy or even clear how people can stop the information from being collected.

Marketing groups, on the other hand, believe that the promulgation of these principles is an excellent first step in organizing business practices to both support the reasonable collection of marketing analytic material while protecting consumers from misinformation and protecting their personal data from misuse.

It is not clear who will win the race to protect consumers. For online retailers, the best advice right now is to read the material published and begin to look at how you can be sure that your practices meet the standards that have been recommended.

You can find the complete document at the IAB website.

Source wholesale , dropshippers, drop shipping & dropship suppliers. Browse wholesale dropshippers by country: Wholesale Italy, USA Wholesale & American Wholesalers, Wholesale France wholesalers.

[tags]consumer rights,consumer privacy,data protection,legal,law,wholesale,wholesalers,dropshippers[/tags]

Thailand’s government recently implemented laws that gave it a tighter control of the internet than ever before, allowing enforcement of new lese majeste laws, and making it easier than ever to catch internet predators and other criminals. The infrastructure and procedures put in place have been mind-boggling, to catch up with technology. However, the threats of the internet are never ending, and online privacy is slowly being eroded with newer targeted advertising options by Google, as well as various search engines. Thai legal services comment on the role of Thailand law in preventing this erosion of privacy, as well as making recommendations for internet users.

Two of the new services by Google that have caused such outcry among Thai legal services and ordinary citizens concerned with privacy, are advertising-based. While advertising is in many ways the tool that keeps the internet alive, and is a necessary evil, some Thailand lawyers feel that the search giant has overstepped its mark with some new services. The first is a geolocation technique, which would allow Google to pinpoint your exact whereabouts, when you are connected to the internet with a mobile device, and then forward that information directly to advertisers. It is designed so that stores close to your physical location could advertise directly to you.

Prima facie, this is a good thing - advertising becomes more relevant to you, and is more likely to get a result for the advertiser. However, privacy experts in Thai law are concerned with the fact that once the information goes into Google’s databases, there is no disclosure of what happens to it. Better transparency by Google has been called for by many. These calls increased after a 2007 survey which ranked Google last on privacy issues, in a field of 23 major companies. In the survey, Google was the only company to earn the lowest possible score for ‘comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy’. It is these policies and rankings which have Thai law consulting services worried when it comes to privacy issues.

Google’s other service which has drawn such criticism from Thailand’s lawyers is the targeted advertising on their usual search engines and affiliated websites. Now, Google is launching a new program to deliver advertising based on a user’s browsing history, not only on the specific page being viewed at the time. If you spend a lot of time surfing pages regarding skiing, for example, Google will deliver you more skiing-related ads, and fewer unrelated ones. While advertisers have been pushing for this for years, consumers and law firms in Thailand are up in arms.
Of course, governments only have a responsibility to ensure that the internet in a country isn’t being used to contravene that country’s laws. And naturally, web-based initiatives require huge amounts of resources. Google and other internet giants are able to put these resources in because there is money to be made, however, Thailand as a whole would benefit little for a large resource investment in countering these privacy breaches.

Instead, Thailand legal services and other Thai law experts are advising that consumers take measures to protect themselves. Google is offering an opt-out option for the program, and consumers can also use history-erasing programs to ensure information is removed from their computers. People search engines like Pipl, CVGadget, Spokeo and Rapleaf have also brought information together on the internet in a way that is disturbing to consumers. Thai law firms are advising to opt out of these services also, as well as setting profile pages to private in services like Amazon, MySpace, Facebook and Pandora.

BSA Law has focused on providing reliable thai Law consulting and services to the business community in Thailand for nearly 30 years. We provide international standards of legal services while retaining the customs of the Thai business culture.Click to find out more about Law firm in Thailand.

[tags]Thai law,Law firm in Thailand,Thai Law consulting,Thai Law firm,Thailand lawyer[/tags]

The parent company of Comedy Central, Viacom, has been sued by YouTube after Viacom requested that YouTube remove from its site a parody of The Colbert Report. The Colbert Report airs on Comedy Central.

The video at issue does contain some clips from The Colbert Report, MoveOn.org and Brave New World Films jointly argue that the use of the clips constitutes “fair use” pursuant to applicable copyright law. The companies argue that Viacom’s attempts to have the video removed from the YouTube community website constitutes a misrepresentation and is subject to damages under the federal statutory provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The lawsuit filed against Viacom seeks unspecified damages, attorneys fees and costs on the grounds that the plaintiffs” free-speech rights were violated.

The complaint was filed on March 22, 2007 in the Federal District Court of San Francisco. That law suit came one week after Viacom had filed its own $1 billion lawsuit against the YouTube community website, and YouTube’s parent company, Google. The Viacom complaint contends that YouTube’s website is awash in copyrighted videos from Viacom shows, including The Colbert Report.

According to the Viacom complaint, a takedown notice was sent to YouTube last week, and the video was blocked by YouTube almost immediately. However, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives users the right to sue the issuer of the take down request (in this case, Viacom) when it contains misrepresentations that an item may be infringing.

The parody “Stop the Falsiness,” a play on host Stephen Colbert’s use of the term “truthiness,” was jointly produced by MoveOn and Brave New Films. Brave New Films is described as an activist production company that has made documentaries on the Iraq war, Wal-Mart, and on the Fox News Channel. “Truthiness” is said to define things that a person “claims to know intuitively, without regard to evidence, logic, or intellectual examination.”

Historically, parody legally has been permissible in that it “pokes fun” at otherwise copyrighted material without confusing the public about its source of origin or usage. In the end, a balance between the public interest in constitutionally protected free speech and avoiding consumer confusion determines whether there has been an infringement pursuant to the Act. Simply, the Court has been called upon to ascertain whether or not MoveOn’s “Stop the Falsiness” as made public on YouTube parodied The Colbert Report and therefore is protected under US copyright law.

Robert Masud, Esq. is the principal of Masud & Company PC, a law firm for the world of business, finance and the internet.
Find out how our lawyers can help you at http://www.masudco.com.

If you’re a new website operator or you own a business website that children under 13 may use, you need to understand and comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. This act was passed on April 21, 2000 to protect the privacy as well as the safety of children under the age of 13 who use the Internet.

COPPA outlines specific requirements website operators
must adhere to, and ignorance is no defense when it comes to COPPA. If you violate the rules outlined in this important Act, you could be charged up to $11,000 per violation.

The rules outlined in COPPA regarding the responsibilities of web operators are very clear. Every website owner or operator should be able to understand the Act completely by reading through it, but if you have questions or doubts about compliance or whether or not your rules apply to your website, don’t leave it to chance.

Regardless of whether or not you operate a site aimed at children under 13 or collect any personal information at all online, you should read and understand the COPPA. If you are operating a website or an online business, it is your responsibility to abide by COPPA, but you can also use your knowledge to look out for other web sites that could be violating the Act. It’s the least you can do to help keep kids safe online.

If you do operate a website that is aimed at children under the age of 13, it is imperative that you completely understand this Act and are positive you are abiding by every rule outlining your responsibilities. If you’re not sure, the easiest way to find out is by seeking assistance from the FTC. You can refer to the FTC’s COPPA website which you can access online. If you have a question about the Act or your responsibilities, pick up the phone and call the COPPA Compliance Information Line at 202-326-3140.

What are some of the Website Operator requirements outlined in COPPA? Websites must post a privacy policy in accordance with COPPA guidelines. Any website directed towards children that collects information from kids under13 must disclose their information collection practices. This disclosure must be created and even placed on your website in a very specific way that is outlined in COPPA. Some websites also must obtain parental consent before they collect, use or disclose personal information about a child under the age of 13.

This is a general overview of three of the types of regulations COPPA holds website operators to, and there are more. You are not necessarily excluded from regulations if you have what you believe to be a general audience website. The only way you will know for certain whether or not COPPA applies to your website is to obtain a copy of the Act and read through it thoroughly. You can also obtain a very helpful COPPA checklist online through the FTC.

You may or may not agree that it is every Internet user’s responsibility to help protect children’s privacy and ensure their safety online, but it is undoubtedly the responsibility of every web operator. It only takes a small investment of your time to read through the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

Make the effort today to ensure your websites are in compliance with FTC regulations, and learn how to spot potentially dangerous websites that could be threatening the privacy of children online.

Download Web Legal Kit today to learn about email compliance measures.

Find out how you can protect your intellectual property with copyrights, trademarks, and patents, including search functions.

http://www.weblegalkit.com

[tags]internet law, internet legal, internet privacy, privacy act, privacy law, childrens privacy act[/tags]

Is your website accessible to people with disabilities? It seems like today, website owners are more concerned with mobile web design than they are with making their sites available to the millions of people around the world with disabilities. It makes sense from a business perspective to make your website as accessible as possible to everyone, but it is also becoming a legal matter and much for many businesses and organizations.

The World Wide Web is classified as a form of Information and Communications Technology, or ICT. Laws and policies regarding ICT accessibility that are already in existence are being considered in terms of the Internet. In addition, more and more legislation addressing ICT accessibility is being enacted around the world.

Although the Internet is for the most part unregulated, laws can apply to the Web as ICT. Many countries currently have government laws, policies, regulations and recommendations in place regarding Web accessibility. An abbreviated list of these countries includes: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Spain the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Americans with Disabilities Act and Internet Accessibility

In the United States, rulings regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) resulted in the determination that State as well as local governments and the business sector must provide “effective communication” during Internet communications.

A significant point of the ADA policy rulings is that communications in graphical format are almost impossible for people with visual disabilities to understand. Screenreaders cannot make sense of graphic images: text format is absolutely essential, including text for navigational tools, graphs, tables and charts.

You can find out more about the ADA and rulings regarding the Internet at the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) website.

Implementing Universal Design

Whether laws are governing your website today or not, it is in your best interest to make your site accessible to all Internet users - especially if it is a business website. How can you accomplish this? By implementing the elements of Universal Design on all of your web pages. Your entire website will then be available to the widest range of Internet users possible, regardless of the type of technology or equipment they use, disabilities, age, or level of education.

The following are some of the specific ways you can apply Universal Design principles to your website:

1. Provide text browser support

2. Present documents in text format rather than in frames or PDF

3. Avoid requiring visitors to download software to view information

4. Add “Alt” tags to your graphics so screenreaders can “read” images

5. Hyperlink all photos with descriptive text

6. Hyperlink video and audio clips with captioning

7. Provide email or voice/TTY phone number alternatives for on-line forms

8. Avoid relying on color to convey information

You can obtain more complete information about website accessibility guidelines from resources such as W3 online.

Depending on your skills, you may or may not need assistance redesigning or developing your next website for full accessibility. Whether you make changes to your website design yourself or rely on professional assistance, remember to evaluate the results.

There are many free evaluation tools available online that can help you test web pages on your site for accessibility. For a comprehensive evaluation that would ensure compliance with web accessibility laws, you will need to rely on the expertise of a knowledgeable professional as well as evaluation tools.

Additional Benefits of Web Accessibility

Whether you need to bring your website to full web accessibility standards to comply with legal requirements, or you’re primarily interested in providing access to those with disabilities, you’ll discover some surprising additional benefits.

A website with a flexible design is more accessible to people browsing the Web with limited technology, such as dial-up Internet connections or outdated computers. Your fully accessible website will also be available to those with temporary disabilities, such as people recovering from surgery or accidents. With the right equipment, even people with limited or no literacy skills will be able to browse your website.

Regardless of what type of website you have, focusing on web accessibility will benefit your visitors as well as your business in a variety of ways.

Download Web Legal Kit today to learn about email compliance measures.

Find out how you can protect your intellectual property with copyrights, trademarks, and patents, including search functions.

http://www.weblegalkit.com

[tags]internet law, web legal, legal website, legal web, web design legal, website compliance[/tags]

A home based online business has to legally comply with the same regulations as an offline business from any other location. Below are the basic legal issues with which a real home based Internet business owner must be familiar.

The first one, a real concern for any home Internet business is the age restriction. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) follows regulations spelled out in COPPA, the Children Online Privacy Protection Act.

The above act requires that children under the age of 13 cannot disclose their personal information unless a parent consents to it. Children under 18 years of age cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to view pornographic content on the Internet, nor are they allowed to enter into any contract.

Real time occurrences on the Web, including chats and forums, must be carefully controlled by the home based Internet business owner. Bulletin boards will have the same control issues.

The rules of using each should very clearly solicit and retain the consent of each online user to refrain from posting pornography. Also, in this category are, defamatory or hate material or anything that infringes on the rights of others.

It is probably not a law and may never be so but respecting, truthfulness and fairness to other human beings should be a serious concern also.

Your company should also clearly state, on its site, that you are not liable for other users that commit to following your policies and guidelines but subsequently violate them. I always keep a sharp eye out on my web sites for this anyway and hope others will do the same.

We should all keep an eye out to preserve the integrity of the internet for all of us.

To make your ownership of all property real and keep content rights safe, on your home based business Internet site, you will need a copyright notice on the site footer, maybe on every page. The notice should clearly have the date, your name and the statement, All rights reserved.

A real copy of your business online site should be filed with the U.S. copyright office. This will effectively record ownership of the site contents, as well as its look and its feel. Incidentally, this will instill confidence in your site visitors that you are sincere about having a worthy web site.

Your site domain name is a dramatically important part of the branding and marketing for your Internet business. It is best to tie that domain name as closely as possible to your logo, your brand and your business name. This is so very important.

Carefully choose a domain name that clearly conveys the products or services of your real home based Internet business. It is the beginning of every sale or donation you ever get from your home business.

It is your very valuable headline. Register your domain name as a trademark and you can retain ownership should it be challenged by another business. Sometimes this will happen.

Your site is on the World Wide Web so you must comply with export regulations. If you sell goods over the Internet to these global consumers, which you should want to do, then you are exporting items for sale and entering into international countries and commerce. Your market increases by hundreds of millions of flesh and blood humans.

If your site is encrypted then you are exporting to other countries per U.S. Department of Commerce and Defense technology regulations. There are many U.S. federal agencies that have regulations in force.

Enforcement agencies are expected to enforce them with the intent of the law, for doing business with other countries. This is their job. Times and circumstances require a firm to get an export license to send information, technology or goods abroad.

Regarding other countries, there is now software on the internet that translates into many of the major world languages. If your web site can sell goods world wide you can use this software to major advantage to sell in many more places.

Your Google Ad Sense will be in other languages giving you more action also so many millions more prospects can read and buy from you. Your online pages will increase dramatically giving you far more links and exposure. Your Alexa rating will begin to rise. Understand the immense benefit from this.

There are countries with whom business transactions are limited severely for U.S. firms. These countries are Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Yugoslavia.

Romania and Malaysia are rife with dishonesty on the internet. It is best to risk losing business with these two countries for now because your chances of being cheated are very high and not worth the risk with such poor odds that are not in your favor.

The best decision about the real problems you might encounter for your home based online business doing commerce with these countries and or the residents should be made with your attorney. Better yet, forget all of these until international relations with them get a lot better.

James M. Lowe writes original articles about home business issues.

[tags]legal, internet law, offline and online law[/tags]