If you ask any commercial lawyer what one of the biggest oversights business owners make is, they will tell you that they fail to ensure their online presence is legally compliant.
By online presence, we are primarily talking about the business’s website in whatever form it may take. A business could have a corporate website, a separate blog, or an online e-commerce site. Whatever type of online property they use, they must realise and appreciate that everything needs to be legally protected.
When we say protected, we do not mean they need to take out any kind of insurance, but instead that they have elements within their websites that cover them against litigation or falling foul of the law as it relates to operating online.
As any commercial lawyer will attest, the frustrating aspect of this is that it is not especially difficult to ensure that you have all the bases covered when it comes to being compliant and meeting your legal obligations online. The addition of a number of pages with specific text can often be all that is needed to be compliant.
You will undoubtedly be aware of the significant increase in publicity about online privacy and data protection. If you operate any website, especially a commercial one, you need to consider privacy laws.
This relates to the 1988 Privacy Act, and one of its basic requirements is that if you require people to give you their personal information, you must inform them what information you are collecting and how it will be used.
Failure to do so can not only make you guilty of a crime, but it could also result in a lawsuit for breach of privacy by any individual whose information you have collected.
Sadly, there are unscrupulous online people who seek out websites whose privacy pages are wanting and then deliberately submit personal information to sue that business. It makes you wonder how many businesses settle without ever going to court, simply to save any bad publicity or a potential fine.
Next, we have spam, which is relevant if you plan to collect email addresses and then communicate to prospects and customers via email. You must never send an unsolicited email so always ensure you have consent.
Intellectual property rights are another minefield that many businesses encounter with their websites. In particular, trademarks and copyrighted material cause the most problems. Some businesses use clips from movies or small pieces of music on their websites without realising they are breaking copyright law.
You can obtain hours of royalty-free music and videos at little cost so there should never be any excuse for getting caught out with a copyright breach.
Finally, we come to commercial transactions made on a website, and with these, the same laws apply, and the same protections exist for customers as they would if they walked into a shop and paid in cash.
You must keep a record of all transactions which are conducted on your website. You should also note that a sale made online is effectively a contract between the website owner and the customers. This is outlined in the Fair Trading Act 1989, and Australian consumer law applies online, every bit as much as it does in the shopping mall.