final steps - legal disclaimers/ privacy policies?

[Gree]

A question to those of you who design sites...

What is a good online resource for getting legal disclaimers and
privacy policies for a web site?

...and are they necessary? Can I just copy-n-paste from another site?
I'm trying to find out what i can here before spending a heap of cash
on a lawyer (if i even need one)

Thanks.

[Adrienne]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Gree" <oc***********@hotmail.com>
writing in news:11**********************@g44g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com:

A question to those of you who design sites...

What is a good online resource for getting legal disclaimers and
privacy policies for a web site?

..and are they necessary? Can I just copy-n-paste from another site?
I'm trying to find out what i can here before spending a heap of cash
on a lawyer (if i even need one)

Thanks.

For a privacy policy, you really need to spend some time writing down
what needs to be in your privacy policy. For example, are you going to
track visitors in server logs? Then that has to be disclosed. Are you
going to use session cookies, and how are they being used? If there is
some sort of dispute, how does the user make the dispute?

http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/ and
http://www.truste.org/about/securityguidelines.php are good places to
start. IBM has a policy generator that guides you through it
<http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/p3peditor>.

With both disclaimers and privacy statements, you should have an attorney
look over what you have for any glaring errors or omissions.

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Andy Dingley]

On 16 Jun 2005 19:14:31 -0700, "Gree" <oc***********@hotmail.com> wrote:

What is a good online resource for getting legal disclaimers
An "average" website doesn't need a disclaimer. If you do need one, then
you need to talk to someone who understands the particular situation
you're dealing with.

Don't disclaim too much. Don't prohibit too much. If you ban something
on a BBS, then you expose yourself to _increased_ risk of legal
liability, if you can't actually achieve this (such as not having the
staff time to remove a libellous comment as quickly as a litigious
curmudgeon would like). Don't claim to do things you can't actually
deliver on.
For copyright issues, take a look at Creative Commons.
You may well need to look at COPPA compliance too.

and privacy policies for a web site?

Look at P3P, and the automatic on-line generators. These will ask you
some ticky-box questions, then generate both a machine-readable and a
human-readable set of boilerplate.

[Stan Brown]

On 16 Jun 2005 19:14:31 -0700, "Gree" <oc***********@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Can I just copy-n-paste from another site?

Not unless you have that site's permission -- copyright, dontcha
know.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you