Posts Tagged ‘Terms Of Service’

How Can I Get Legal Forms for My Website?

If you run a website on the internet, you really must include legal disclaimers. Legal Disclaimers can protect you from many kinds of legal problems that greedy or disgruntled users of the site could cause. Furthermore if you are running a US based website, or a website that deals with US businesses and customers you need to follow guidelines laid down by various federal agencies.

The important question of course though is, “Where can I get legal forms for my website?”. You may be tempted to simply copy a legal form from another website, but this could be a terrible idea. Legal disclosures on websites are often produced by lawyers and are used under license, and thus protected by copyright law. If you are found to have infringed a lawyers copyright it could end up costing you a lot of money! So if we ignore this option, there are three other common choices. You could hire an attorney of your own to produce your legal forms, you could use a legal form generator, or you could use one of thousands of pre-prepared free online legal forms. You should weigh each option up against the other and decide which is best for your particular website.

(1) You could hire an attorney specializing in internet law and have him draft up some legal forms for your website. This is of course a very expensive endeavor and only recommended if you are running a “serious” website making “serious” money. For 99% of webmasters using a legal form generator or a using free online legal forms will be a more sensible option. You can get perfectly good legal disclosures at a fraction of the cost of hiring a lawyer.

(2) You could use free legal forms which you can find online. There are a myriad of websites which offer free legal documents which may be suitable for your site. This is certainly a cost effective method of acquiring valid legal disclosures for your website, but please make sure that the legal forms you use are correct for YOUR site.

(3) You could use a legal form generator. If you do not know what this is exactly, it is a computer program into which you input the details of your website and business. The program will then automatically generates a series of legal forms for your website. This can be a good solution if you are a webmaster and have several or a lot of sites you wish to produce legal forms for. If you are using a reputable form generator you can be sure that the templates will have been produced by a lawyer and will be suitable for a wide range of websites.

As we have seen it is incredibly important for you to provide legal disclosures on your website and you need to make sure that the forms you do use are appropriate for your site. It is recommended that you first decide how many different websites you are going to need legal forms for, and then select the best option for your situation from the three above. Remember, do not try and ‘borrow’ your online legal forms from someone else’s website – it could get you in trouble!

What Should be Covered in a Website’s Terms of Service?

If you are wondering why you need a Terms of Service (TOS) page on your website and just exactly what it should contain then you need to read this article. A TOS is extremely important for your webpage in order to protect you from possible legal consequences from a disgruntled user, or even worse, a money gabbing extortionist.

If you are selling or promoting something on your website and the consumer does not get the results they expect they may well try and sue you. If you are offering information and the reader somehow feels that they have been harmed or misled by it, they might sue you. If you are an affiliate for another website and the user does not like what that website sells them they may sue you for leading them there. A Terms Of Service page can help protect you against all of these situations.

What you will need in your TOS will depend on the purpose of your website, the information it offers, the actions users can take on the website, the information that is collected on the site, and the products you promote or sell. Some important things  that you may wish to have in a Terms of Service page are the following:

- The site is for general information only and may change without notice.
- That you do not guarantee any of the information on the website with regards to accuracy, timeliness, completeness, suitability or performance and that it may contain errors.
- That the reader of your site uses the information at their own risk and you will not be liable.
- That the material on the website is owned or licensed by you, is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced.
- That all trademarks mentioned on your website or acknowledged by the website.
- That unauthorized use of your website may be subject to claims for damages or may be a criminal offence.
- That you do not bear responsibility for any other websites linked to from your own.
- That if legal proceedings commence they will take place in your jurisdiction, not the plaintiffs.

You may well need other clauses depending on the purpose of your website. A quick glance at the Terms of Service on sites such as Yahoo or Facebook will show you just how lengthy these can be. Even though they are generally ignored by the user they should always be included to protect you from possible legal harm.

If you need a TOS for your website you should either consult a lawyer, use free online legal forms, or use a legal form generator. Whichever method you choose, just make sure you try and cover all your bases to protect both yourself and your business from possible legal consequences.