The Fine Print
If you own or design websites, you should consider including a copyright notice, disclaimer, terms of use statement, privacy policy and a cookies policy. These don’t have to be separate pages but can often be combined. For example, it is common to combine a disclaimer with the terms of use.
The copyright notice
A copyright notice is a declaration of ownership which is intended to assist with cases of copyright infringement.
A copyright notice used to be a prerequisite to copyright protection. This is no longer the case in many places, including the United States.
A Copyright Notice may cover the following:
- Ownership
- License
- Permissions
- Infringment
- Enforcement
The Disclaimer Notice
The primary purpose of a website disclaimer is to limit or attempt to limit the liabilities that a website owner or publisher may suffer arising out of the website. Examples of the kinds of liability that we publishers must contend with include libel/defamation, copyright infringement and breach of privacy.
Most legal systems strictly control the effects of limitations and exclusions of liability. For this reason you should get local legal advice.
A Disclaimer or Terms of Use Statement may cover the following:
- No warranties
- Limitations of liability
- Trademarks and Copyrights
- Internet E-mail
- Third Party Links
- Jurisdiction
- Exceptions and Overrides
- Reasonableness
- Unenforceable Provisions
- Submissions
The Privacy Statement
Many if not most websites collect personal information. Personal information may be collected by simple means such as a website form or through more sophisticated means such as tracking cookies. Some kinds of websites collect and process large amounts of personal information.
EU data protection law and US data privacy law (and similar laws in other jurisdictions) protect individuals from the misues of their personal information. These laws regulate the collection of data, the storage of data, the use of data, the cross-border transfer of data and the disposal of data
The purpose of a website privacy statement is to help website owners with these the disclosure requirements of data protection and data privacy laws.
A Privacy Statement may contain any or all of the following:
- Personal Information Collection
- Using Personal Information
- Security of Collected Data
- Data Transfer and Transmission
- Other WebSites
- Contact Information
- Procedures For Removing Data
Cookies Policy
In some legal systems website operators are subject to a legal obligation to provide information to users about the use of cookies. The purpose of a cookies policy is to satisfy these obligations.
A Cookies Policy may contain the following sections:
- About Cookies
- Their Use
- Third Party Cookies
- Refusal
- Contents
- Expiration Time
I’ve tried to be as complete as possible. Most websites, including this one, do not have statements that exhaustively cover each of the points above, though they may touch on them. However, the presence of a copyright statement, a privacy policy and a disclaimer of some sort are essential if you want your website to look professional. Feel free to use my Privacy Policy and Terms of Use as models from which to craft your own policy statements.
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