Questions tagged [legal]
Questions related to the law and how it relates to websites and their management.
302
questions
47
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What are some good resources for generating privacy policies and terms of use? [closed]
We've determined that our website needs a privacy policy and a terms of use page to protect our interests. Are there automated tools that will generate these for us? How do we go about creating ...
46
votes
7
answers
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How (il)legal is it to get data from a 100% accessible but not "exposed" API
I found a website that provides a huge filterable table with up-to-date data about cities in a country. This site uses an infinite scrolling approach to load the rows for the table.
By exploring ...
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36
votes
6
answers
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How do I copyright my website?
My website has been in development for a long time and cost a lot of money. How do I go about securing an enforceable copyright on my website design and what is the proper way to post a copyright ...
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7
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Are there any downsides of including google-analytics on your website?
I am in particular concerned with legal implications due to strong privacy legislations. However, I was also thinking about performance and false results by users blocking it.
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7
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Does the EU cookie law apply to an EU site that is hosted outside of the EU?
I have been reading up about this EU cookie law, and have also had in depth conversations with my girlfriend who is a solicitor/lawyer and with colleagues while building websites. While we are now ...
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17
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5
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3k
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Google Analytics and the EU cookie directive. Who will fall foul of the law? Google or the developer?
So Google uses cookies when performing its usual duties of tracking users on a website. That is just it though; Google are setting the cookies and not your website as such. This is by virtue of the ...
- 471
16
votes
8
answers
6k
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Is it legally problematic to use the same WordPress theme as my competitor?
I want to purchase a WordPress theme from ThemeForest, however, it is used by a competitor.
Can they make a formal complaint that I have copied their site even though the theme is publically ...
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16
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6
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5k
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When does a website require a privacy policy and/or terms of use?
I am curious to know if every website should have a privacy policy and/or a terms of use page. What are the legal implications if a site doesn't have them? Are there certain categories of websites ...
- 2,158
16
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1
answer
2k
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What do I do if a user uploads child pornography?
If my website allows uploading images (which are not moderated), what action do I take if a user uploads child pornography?
I already make it easy to report images, and have never had this problem ...
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15
votes
1
answer
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Is it legal and ethical to remove license notices from third-party code?
I want to use third-party code as my front-end framework, for example Bootstrap. In the code for Bootstrap and jQuery, there's a license. For example in boostrap.css:
/*!
* Bootstrap v3.0.3
*
* ...
- 193
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1
answer
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Has the EU sued any site(s) yet for not complying with their cookie "law"?
EUROPA websites must follow the Commission's guidelines on privacy and data protection and inform users that cookies are not being used to gather information unnecessarily. - source
Many people find ...
- 3,339
15
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1
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Am I legally liable for user generated content and comments?
I know that it is in your best interest to enforce specific policies in regards to what is appropriate for your site, but are there any legal issues with not filtering their content?
For example, ...
- 253
14
votes
1
answer
2k
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Why are these sites cloning my content, and how do I stop them?
So I was searching for one of my own websites on Google: http://www.botlibre.com
and to my surprise found some clones of my website, like:
http://83waystowasteyourtime.adidas.com
and:
http:// ...
- 161
12
votes
2
answers
260
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Can .gov (or similar official) websites be used for partisanship?
If I were asked to design and maintain a website for a governor seeking reelection highlighting how his or her administration was helping the state to get by in "Tough economic times", would ...
- 271
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4
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How should creative commons attribution for images be shown?
Clicking through from Flickr to the CreativeCommons.org definition for "Some Rights Reserved" you find that you can reuse an image as long as you provide attribution.
If we want to use the image in a ...
- 1,280
11
votes
8
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Using competitors domain with different ending to boost traffic
Imagine my competitor is getting 1000s of views a day and is established in Google search engine.
I plan to launch my website in a weeks time but will have to work hard to get into google search ...
- 425
11
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1
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2k
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Google recieves court order to produce information relating to AdSense account
This is a new one for me and doing some quick searching didn't produce and informative results pertaining to my questions. I did find information regarding the case which dates back to 2014.
Today I ...
- 2,355
11
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3
answers
839
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Where do blogs get their pictures?
I see a lot of blogs that are full of picture galleries, showing celebrities for example, and I wonder how they get all these pictures.
Do most blogs just take pictures from Google Images? Or is ...
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10
votes
2
answers
823
views
Legal Web Fonts & Licensing
So I'm a little confused in regards to legality of using fonts for web.
Often from designers I get a PSD file and it uses a special font, and the font is supplied. However attempting to convert the ...
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3
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Deleting backups - Request to delete customer data - Data Protection Act 1998
It was brought up today about the customers right to have their data deleted and went on to an interesting talk about backed up data (we have a rolling 93 day window for backups on AWS s3)
I was ...
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Are date of birth forms necessary for alcoholic websites?
I've noticed that many beer and spirits companies often require you to enter your date of birth before entering their site (ex. Budweiser.com).
Is this form legally required? Or is it just a popular ...
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9
votes
2
answers
486
views
Where is the line drawn with domain names which include a trademark?
A search on google for "iphone developer" turns up loads of websites which have "iphone" in them, a trademarked name by Apple.
So I'm led to believe that having a domain such as iphonedeveloper.com ...
- 301
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votes
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answers
269
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Alot of Pirated Material on Someone's Website - What Can Be Done?
We've developed our website for over 10 years. Recently a website in China has begun to pirate our images and product descriptions (they are showing "new" March offerings). Nearly all of the ...
9
votes
2
answers
273
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Under what circumstances is a website subject to United States laws?
I'm a Canadian student currently hosting a website using a German VPS service, which I want to put a forum on in the near future where users can submit content. However, all of my domains are .com, ...
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answers
437
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Legal standing for a copyright notice placed by prior web developer? (long backstory)
Let's say a prior web developer placed a copyright notice on a website in the web developer's and not the client's name. The prior web developer has been hostile and actually took the site down for ...
- 8,628
9
votes
2
answers
587
views
Google's Icon Legality
I'm creating a homepage for all the computers within my company. We're a small business so we're using Google Apps. I've designed a very simple site that will be only accessible with an authorised ...
- 193
9
votes
3
answers
360
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Website "theft" - what is the best way of dealing with these individuals?
I was doing a duplicate content search on the web for our site content and found that someone has downloaded/mirrored our entire website and is hosting it on a subdomain of their own main domain. When ...
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8
votes
5
answers
3k
views
Competing against the same business name in search results
A client of mine had an acrimonious split with their business partner. My client owns the legal business entities but unfortunately the other partner has the server/domain details. The other partner ...
- 309
8
votes
1
answer
336
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Can I be charged for letting a domain expire?
A few months ago I let a domain expire that I no longer wanted. I just received a bill from a collections agency saying that I owe about $100 because although I let the domain expire, it's necessary ...
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2
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Are there any legal implications to reading a user's privates messages on a forum?
I'm the webmaster of a forum and we are having trouble with a user and we suspect he uses privates messages to do illegal business (not illicit, but illegal according to the forum rules).
Are their ...
8
votes
5
answers
248
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What do I need to do to enable my site to accept credit cards?
I want to store my customers' credit card information in my database so that they can quickly check out again without having to re-enter their info. What do I need to know about security/https/etc to ...
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8
votes
4
answers
208
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Is it safe to have no TOS or PP?
I have coded my own forums from the ground up. I have tried my best to make my code as secure as possible and encrypting everything I can. I want to use this forum for a Minecraft server. I have one ...
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Where to store users consent (EU cookie law)
We are legally obliged in a few months to obtain consent from users to allow us to store any cookies on the users PC.
My query is, what would be the most effective way of storing this consent to ...
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2
answers
1k
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What can I do if someone is spoofing my site?
Someone registered a domain name that is close to mine used a different suffix (.info) and ripped off the UI. They took a screenshot of our homepage put it on their site and put up a modal window ...
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7
votes
3
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3k
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Is rebuilding a website considered plagiarism?
Our company has a website hosted and created by some company but we don't like the way things are handled so we decided to pull the plug and create & host our own website.
Now the question is:
...
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7
votes
3
answers
602
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Why is the EU cookie directive causing so much excitement?
I am confused by all the excitement surrounding the EU cookie directive; why is it such a painful thing?
As far as I can see cookies that are required for your site to function are allowed such as ...
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5
answers
302
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What benefit do you get from posting terms of service, privacy policy, etc.?
Just wondering why you'd post terms of service, privacy policy, etc. on a website.
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2
answers
225
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Is it legal to host very, very detailed summaries of copyrighted material?
I have a website where people can discuss books of various topics, mostly technical and practical stuff. Lately I have noticed that some members are posting very, very detailed summaries/reviews of ...
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2
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6k
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Can I legally use a competitor's business name on my site to compare products?
Simply put, does a company have any grounds for legal recourse if their name is used on a competitor's website in the following manner?
{Product Title and Description} (Comparable to {Competitor's ...
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7
votes
1
answer
523
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Can a company take my domain away from me?
I have a domain which coincidentally is the same name of a company. Is there any legal way in which this company can take my domain away from me?
- 173
7
votes
2
answers
234
views
Dealing with illegal user-submitted content
I recently got a question from a user that I'm not quite certain how to answer. Basically I run a service that will allow users to submit content for analysis. The data submitted is very rarely stored,...
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votes
1
answer
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Similar domains using my business' content, and stealing SEO results
I've been hired to create a website for a restaurant in my city, let's call it "Flying Dragon" Chinese restaurant. The restaurant has never had a website, though the business itself is about ten years ...
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6
votes
2
answers
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Is it allowed to embed YouTube videos behind a paywall?
Is it against any legal law or YouTube TOS themselves to embed videos (which are available for embedding obviously) for streaming on your website and put them behind a paywall, e.g. give access only ...
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1
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Am I allowed to save basic user data from Facebook in my own web app's database?
In general my app deals with data that is unrelated to Facebook but also includes a Graph API based app.
So it would be helpful for someone to login with Facebook (without registering in my own web ...
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votes
1
answer
862
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Legal information on a website
I'm in the process of re-developing my website.
We're currently a non-monetary website, funded entirely by ourselves, but we'd like to start earning some money from adverts and possibly paid content.
...
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6
votes
1
answer
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Countering a DMCA removal from Google Search for a root category page
A category page got a Notice of DMCA removal from Google Search, submitted through Lumen Databases, for a copyright infringing thumbnail. We have noticed this is becoming a pattern and category root ...
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1
answer
955
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Should I hide the content inside the cookies law compliance banner from search engines?
I am working on my first website.I am working on the last steps before deploying it. Now I am facing the law compliance requirements.
Right now it is mandatory by GDPR to show the cookies compliance ...
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votes
2
answers
130
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Do website owners have a right to not allow linking their site from other sites?
You can search for this phrase on Google/Bing 'Hypertext or other links to this website are prohibited without the consent of …' and you'll see a very long list of companies that state the same about ...
- 161
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votes
3
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Where to place privacy, legal, etc info on a website?
Every website I've ever been to has links to legal, privacy, tos, etc on the bottom of every page.
Is this required?
Can I have all that info on a specific about page rather than on every page?
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Is it a legal requirement to display company registration details?
Is it a legal requirement to display company registration details (Office, country and reg no etc) on a UK Based corporate website?
I know that E-Commerce websites do, under the distance selling ...
