Careless with Your Business Website? Don't Get Sued.
A legal audit of your website can stop lawsuits before they begin. These tips will make you aware of potential problems and tell you how to prevent the nightmare of lawsuits for compliance irregularities, defamation, copyright infringement and other (not so obvious) website no-nos.
CIO — An improperly created website can breed lawsuits. It's not the place to test the limits of the law. Once you put information out on the Net, it's there for anybody to see. It's the ultimate in unrestricted access. You might create a site for potential customers, but your competitors and enemies get to see it too. A cautious and conservative approach is the way to go. How cautious you need to be will vary depending on several things. The preventive medicine is a legal audit of your website.
The precise legal standards for websites aren't easy to define as the law is in its infancy. The global availability of the Net and all the differing legal systems throughout the world has exacerbated the problem of establishing the applicable legal standard. To some extent, you need to be concerned about the laws of every jurisdiction, but complete compliance with every variation of every law throughout the world is obviously an impossible goal. How you cope with this depends on what you do and where you do it.
If You Don't Do Overseas Business
If you're an American company in a generally unregulated industry, and assuming that you don't have any overseas operations, your legal compliance strategy can probably safely center on the United States. In this scenario, your tech lawyer can guide you on what's considered "mainstream" compliance.
While it's true that "mainstream" compliance doesn't guarantee complete legal compliance, it's the only reasonable approach. If you demand a guarantee of complete legal compliance only your lawyer will make money. There are just too many laws in too many states. Enjoy the benefits of your generally unregulated status. Accept some risk, enjoy your profits, and deal with problems when and if they occur.
If we change just one variable, the advice changes. If you're in a generally regulated industry, you must be more cautious. The starting point in your legal audit is to decide what states may have jurisdiction over your actions. The analysis will vary depending upon your industry whether its securities, insurance, banking or whatever.
Your website audit will then need to focus on those state and federal laws. Since you're in a regulated industry, you're already used to the need for often fastidious compliance with the laws and regulations of multiple states. In this context, your website is no different from anything else you do. You can't just slap up a website while blithely commenting that nobody regulates the Internet. You're wrong! In some ways, everybody regulates the Internet.
