Website Terms and Conditions

 

Are you providing information on your Website? If so, you need to tell users of your site how they may use that information and to limit your liability for inaccuracies in the information. If you receive communications from site users, you need to know how you should plan to use those communications.

 The general terms and conditions under which users may use your Website and information they find on your Web site. If your Web site has a Chat Room, then you need a Chat Room Agreement as well to tell users the rules for using the Chat Room. If you sell products or license software from your Website, you need a Click wrap Agreement stating the terms and conditions of your sale or licence.

For this purpose, there are no issues to be negotiated—you’re providing the Website, and users must accept your rules.

Technically, you should use a Form which is a contract between you, the Web site owner, and users. But how do you get a user to express assent to your terms and conditions? From a legal point of view, the best way to do this is to (1) put the information in this form on a “terms and conditions of use” screen, which a usermust pass through before entering the Website; (2) make the user do something to show assent to the “terms” before entering the Website—for example, by registering and typing “I agree”; (3) keep records of the user assents; and (4) give users the option of exiting at the “terms” screen if they do not want to accept those rules.

 Does that sound like too much trouble? From a legal viewpoint, the next best thing is to require users to click through a “terms” screen to get to your Website. The “terms” screen states that using the Website represents the user’s assent to the stated terms. The “click through” requirement is being used for Chat Rooms.

You may think that requiring users to click through the “terms” screen to get to your Website is too much to ask of users, because it slows them down. After all, you don’t want to discourage them from using your site. If that’s how you feel, take this approach: Make the user aware that your site has Terms and Conditions by placing a notice on your site’s home page, and make it easy for them to click to the “terms” screen. Don’t just bury the “terms” screen somewhere on your Web site without mentioning it on your home page.

In the Website Terms and Conditions of Use form, the Website owner is referred to as “the Company.” The Web site to which the terms and conditions apply is “the Website.” The Website user is referred to as “you.” All material of any kind posted on the Website is the “Material.”

 In the following checklist, “you” means the Web site owner. Checklist of Issues

1. Section 1 reminds Website users that the Material provided on your Website is protected by copyright and that unauthorized use may infringe copyright law and other laws. It states the rules for use of the Material. You may need to provide special rules for the use of certain software or content. If so, the special rules may be posted as “Legal Notices.”

 2. For more complex Websites, the Terms and Conditions should state that the rules governing certain aspects of Websites (such as software downloading and Chat Room use) are provided in separate agreements.

3. Section 1 grants users the right to view and download a single copy of the materials at the Website for personal, non-commercial use, as long as all copyright and other proprietary notices are retained. Use of the Materials on a network or on another Website is prohibited. If you wish to provide broader or narrower use rights, modify this sentence.

 4. If the Website includes copyrighted material owned by third parties, make sure that any obligations you have to limit Website users’ use are addressed in Section 1 of your Terms and Conditions (or in special rules stated in Legal Notices). If, for example, your licenses to use third-party material only authorize you to permit user downloading for personal, non-commercial use—which is common in content licenses— Section 1 must include that restriction on user download rights.

5. You may want to add a sentence to Section 1 telling users how to request permission for commercial use or network use of the Material.

6. Sections 2 and 3 are designed to limit your liability for errors in information in material on your Website and for damages resulting from the use of the Website or its material. They include a disclaimer of all warranties in the Material and a statement that you are not liable to the users for consequential damages and other damages. Section 7 limits your liability to $100 (but you may want to provide a different limit for software).

 7. If the Website contains material supplied by third parties, you might want to add to Section 2 a statement that you are not responsible for the content of material provided by third parties.

8. Depending on what industry you are in, special notices might be added to Section 2. For example, the owner of a financial services Website might include a reminder to users to consult with an investment or tax professional before making investment decisions.

9. Many Websites permit users to communicate with the Website operator. If your Website provides this function and you want to be able to use the user submissions in the future, you will need a license from the user. Section 4 provides a license. It also states that user submissions are not confidential (so that users cannot claim that you need their permission to disclose the submissions). 10. Section 5 disclaims liability for the content of linked sites operated by third parties. If you wish, you may add a statement requiring that a Web site owner who wants to link to your Site must get your permission in advance.

 11. If your Website includes software that users can download, you should either add software license provisions to this agreement or include Section 6, which states that the software is made available subject to a separate software license (such as Form 10). If your Website provides different types of software, you may need a separate software license for each type, because you may want to grant different use rights for each type of software.

12. If you are concerned about liability for user postings to your Website or user use of Website Material, you may want to include a user indemnity such as Section 8. In Section 8, the user agrees to “hold you harmless” against any claims against you arising out of the user’s use of the Material and software or the user’s breach of the terms of this agreement.

 

13. Section 9 is appropriate if your Web Site provides software or other material which is subject to export control laws.