Lawyers discuss how to avoid legal liability on the Web

As companies continue to jump on the Internet, linking to outside content or adding video and pictures to beef up Web pages, expect more violations of copyright laws, and more lawsuits.

At Summer Internet World here, experts offered Web site owners tips on protecting themselves from liability.

Disclaim, disclaim, disclaim
Anthony Lupo, an attorney at Washington D.C.-based Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, said the most important step companies can take is putting up a disclaimer. "If there's one thing you take away from this, that would be it," he said.

The disclaimer should require users to indicate their agreement by clicking on a button or link, and it should contain wording that the user won't exploit the site for commercial reasons or reverse engineer it.

He said one of the biggest challenges is getting companies to realize that copyright and trademark fines can multiply exponentially on the Web because usually they're determined by the number of violating copies, and the Internet makes it extremely easy to reproduce content.

"Most of these laws were crafted for the real world, and now we're trying to apply them in cyberspace," he said. "Anytime you send a photo, send a message, you're distributing it."

Link protection
Lupo also urged people to put a disclaimer on their page when providing outside links, saying the Web site owner doesn't necessarily endorse the links and isn't responsible for their content. That can protect companies from being sued if one of the linked companies is breaking the law.

Lupo also said people should be careful not to violate trade and copyright law when they add content to their site. In fact, everything created after 1922 is protected by copyright unless: 1.) it's published by the government or 2.) the owner explicitly says the content is not protected. However, laws covering fair use and educators often allow the transmission, and even copying, of factual information.

Some other recommendations for companies developing Web sites include:

register domain name misspellings, to prevent others from capitalizing on your name. Holiday Inn recently won a suit related to this issue.

make sure contributors sign papers saying that the information they provide to a site is legitimate.

develop a written contract with outside Webmasters. Otherwise, they could have the rights to the "look and feel" of Web sites they've worked on, even after finishing the job.

pay close attention to whether "electronic rights" are included in contracts. The New York Times was sued by some freelancers, who claim the paper did not have rights to republish their printed stories electronically. The paper won the latest round, but Lupo said he would not rely on that case if he were a publisher.