Website businesses - regulations and compliance

Hi all website entrepreneurs or my friends thinking of starting a website(s) or representatives of website(s). I hope this post is valuable to you in assisting you to legally and securely conduct and regulate your website business.

Ever since post late 80's, with the dynamic growth of the Internet and usage of online resources, the website business has grown tremendously and developed as a lucrative channel of income for many entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations. You'll find various types of website in this universe including but not limited to service and/or product oriented, market places, professional hiring places, social marketing places, media places, music, sound, pictures and/or media sharing. All such types of websites do have some governing laws to comply with; you may be thinking which law will govern your website as your customers can be from any part of the World. Here's the answer: your website is governed by the laws of the jurisdiction from where it is operated. Then there can be various Governmental rules and regulations and statutory requirements over your websites depending on the nature and purpose of your website.

But above rule do have an exception, some websites can be regulated by dual jurisdictions, and to conclude whether a website needs to comply with dual jurisdiction has to be determined by deeply understanding the services of the website and targeted audience. This is actually determined by the ever growing rules and rationales of Caselaws.

For some type of online business, like hedge funds, funds of hedge funds, fund raising, arms and weapons sale, jewelry, health products, fertilizer products, there are special requirements to fulfil, and such requirements are imposed by Governmental agencies OR ACTS like FTC, FDC, ATF, HIPAA, etc.

It is of imperial importance that your website efficiently complies with such requirements for long terms safe and secure business. There are many websites which are banned and removed from host servers (hosts are forced to do that) by government agencies because of their non-compliance. Still, from my legal experience I believe that there exist large number of websites which are in non-compliance and infringing Federal, State or International laws but still they are conducting business for years. The issue is the enforcement of laws in this vast and never ending webspace, but it does not mean that such business/websites will keep on regulating without being caught by the eyes of regulating agencies, the sword hanges forever.

Another question I think you have in your mind is that how your website is going to comply with all such multiple complicated legal requirements. What you need to have is very diligently drafted legal documentation on your website. Your website shall have all the required disclaimers of regulating Acts and/or agencies, and in the right format. The legal documentation for every website is specific depending on particular governing law and functionality. Mere copy paste of legal documentation can be a vulnerable threat to your web based business. For some of the websites it needs to be assured that you are not infringing registered Patent rights, if so, you need to adapt some changes to make sure that you are not in the line of infringement.

I hope this initial information on website regulation and compliance is useful and you can feel free to reach me for any further queries without slightest of hesitation.

The author of this article is Avish Sharma representing an International legal firm Prodigy Legal Minds, a lawyer expertise in international online business laws; he could be reached at avish@prodigylegal.com or 347-404-5274. You can visit the website www.prodigylegal.com for further information.
Disclaimer: *It should be strictly noted that nothing in this article constitutes as legal advice or solicitation and no attorney-client relationship can be interfered with the author or firm. For further discussion you can contact the author.