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Title:
The Internet Legal Guide: Everything you need to know when doing business online
Review:
This book aims to be a common-sense easy to read publication on what is legal and practical when using the net. It covers issues relating to the internet and ecommerce, and points out ways of minimising the legal risks involved. The internet legal guide gives tips on how to design and create your own website, and to do so in a way that fulfils any legal requirements.
The book provides sample wording for a number of legal agreements such as a text licensing agreement, image licensing agreement, privacy policies, e-commerce agreement, or web site terms of use.
Dennis Powers covers a lot of ground in this book, dealing with topics such as copying or posting text and non text items on the net, and how to protect your intellectual property; the myth of anonymity on the web and electronic trails; defamation and libel; data protection and privacy issues; web privacy statements; how to limit the amount of spam that you get; fraud and scams; "clickwrap" agreements; electronic signatures; domain name disputes; and how to deal with buying shoddy or inferior goods from legitimate firms.
The book is written from a US legal perspective, although the very nature of the internet means that much of the material is relevant to people based elsewhere around the world. It is written in a very clear and straightforward manner, and deliberately tries to avoid the use of legalese. In addition to looking at how the law applies to the various activities carried out on the web, the book also considers the use of netiquette to determine your conduct. The author says that you will need to apply a standard of reasonableness to your dealings in cyberspace "regardless of whether statute at that time regulates such conduct. The courts will for sure".
The question of whether people can link freely on the web is discussed and this covers issues such as deep linking, the use of frames technology and meta tags. There is also a sample form of wording for a linking permission agreement, whether this be with or without payment.
The global nature of the internet has shown all too clearly the conflict of laws that exists because of the differences in the laws of nations around the world. Since cyberspace knows no boundaries, the book considers the question of which law is applicable; and also looks at the ways of resolving legal disputes. Arbitration is discussed, as well as the possibility of incorporating an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) provision into contracts. The author points out that whilst the development of specific laws on a country-to-country basis has not kept pace with the internet's growth and changes, the vast structure of legal concepts and laws that are already in place is often sufficient for many users to determine what they can or cannot safely do.
There is an index and selected bibliography. But I think that the book would benefit from having a separate listing of the legal cases cited, with the full citations to make it easier for those wishing to follow up on some of the cases mentioned.
Free Pint Reviewer:
Paul Pedley is Head of Research at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He is a member of the steering group for the JISC Legal Information Service http://www.jisc.ac.uk/legal, and a regular speaker and writer on legal issues such as copyright and data protection.
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