How to Legally PROTECT Your Business Website | 4 Legal Requirements

Hi, I'm attorney Brittany Ratelle, and I help online business owners get legally legit. And today I'm going to talk to you about what you need to do to get your website legally legit, protected, and ready to move forward and help you in your business. Now, the website's a really important resource for a lot of different reasons, but a lot of people think that there are maybe only special things you need or legal things you need on your website if you are selling from your website. And while it can be true that there are additional things you for sure want to have your website if you are selling products, whether physical products, digital products, programs or memberships, online courses from your website, even if you are not selling anything from website, even if it's acting more as a portfolio or a home base, a blog or just a center of content and you make money from ad revenue or don't monetize your website at all, it's still likely that there are certain things you need to have on your website. So let's get into what you need to have. As a reminder, while I am a licensed attorney, I practice in Utah and Idaho, and with the intellectual property practice, I have clients all over the US, but I'm not your attorney and this is not official legal advice. If you have any questions about what we talk about today or in any of my other videos or content or resources, please consult with a local attorney in your jurisdiction. All right, so let's get into what is the first thing you need on your website. It's going to be your privacy policy. I'm sure you've heard of these. I'm sure you've seen these in footers. I'm sure you've had to click and check the box on these at 3 AM when you're uploading a new version of your software or your phone's resetting itself or whatnot. There is no federal privacy law in the US yet. As of recording, it's January 2023 when I'm recording this. However, there is an international law, GDPR, which is a privacy law for the entire European Union that most people probably want to comply with because it only takes one European Union citizen to wander on your website and maybe try to purchase something or browse around for you to need to be compliant with that law. And technically, you could be dragged into their court system and face fines if you're not complying with them. Second reason is that U.S. states are caring more about privacy than they used to, and the trend from my perspective is only going to go in that direction. California has a pretty comprehensive privacy law, has a lot of things in common with GDPR, and there was 4 other US states that will have privacy laws live and active on their books by the end of this calendar year of 2023. So moral of the story, too long didn't read, right? You gotta have a privacy policy. You just do. Don't care what website platform you are, you've got to have it. So this privacy policy should be in the footer of your website, and you also might need to have a cookie notice or allow people to adjust cookie settings depending on where you live, how much information you collect, the size of your email list, and the size of your business. Okay, so number 1, privacy policy. Number 2, you need any necessary disclaimers or disclosures based on what you sell and how you sell it. What do I mean by that? If you are a professional, it's likely you're probably familiar with some disclosures. It means there are certain things you have to be clear about, the limits of your expertise or any advice that you're giving. And when you're not giving advice or entering into a client or professional relationship, this is especially important if you are in health and wellness, if you are in financial or tax or legal advice. But this also applies applies if you are selling from your website, or if you have things like affiliate links, any marketing that talks about how much money people are going to make from your program. So if you talk about any earnings, it also matters if you have sponsored content on your website. So if you are an influencer or content creator and you partner with people and you have certain content that could be sponsored, all of that needs to be disclosed and to be clearly disclosed on your website. And it needs to be clear to people that there's a financial relationship, and that's being used to be clear and conspicuous. That's the guidance by the Federal Trade Commission, which is the body of the US and the government body that controls and cares about this. So tip number 3, you need our terms and conditions. These are sometimes called website terms, terms of use, terms of service. It gets kind of confusing. We're all talking about the same thing here. It's a mini contract, sometimes not so mini if I'm being honest. It is a mini contract that says anyone that wanders on your website, you are entering into an agreement These are your house rules. They are in your clubhouse. What are the expectations? What can they do and not do on your website? What belongs to you and how can they use it? And especially, this is critical if you are selling from your website. The terms should also contain things like your shipping policy or refund policy. It should also have information about copyright. If you have content on your website, especially if that content is what you're selling, if that's your main product, it's critical for these to be really clear terms and really clear boundaries set up. And then all websites should have things like a DMCA notice, and that's basically a short little snippet of text that explains if there's stuff on your website that belongs to someone else and they have a copyright problem with you, they think that you are hosting infringing content of theirs, this is how they can contact you to take care of it. And you won't have any liability, you won't be in trouble as long as you take care of it according to that procedure in a reasonable amount of time. It's just a notice you'd have to have. Everyone needs to have it on their website, DMCA notice. And then in your terms should also be the legal name of your business. You want to make it really clear to people that you are operating your business separately from you, and if there's a problem, yo, I'll solve it. Actually, distinction, uh, sorry Vanilla Ice, if there's a problem, my business will solve it, because your problem with— is with my business, and my business is operating the website. So it's okay if you have a boring name or a legal name of your business like Smith Holdings LLC, that's okay, but that should probably be in the footer of your website. It should probably be as part of your copyright statement. It should show up in your terms, making it clear that Smith Holdings is operating this website. And if you have a DBA, meaning a separate doing business as trade name or business name or fictitious name that the public knows you as, that's fine. That can be in the top or the branding of the website. We want to make it really clear what the legal connection is, that legal bridge between what the public knows you as and what they're purchasing and who's the legal business, who's the legal entity behind it. So we want to make sure that's really clear on your website as evidence in case you need to show when there is a dispute. It's another piece of evidence that you can have to show, hey, you are not allowed to pierce the corporate veil. That sounds really scary. Basically, it's what someone's allowed to get to you and to get to your personal money. We don't want that to happen. We want that LLC boundary to stay up nice and tight and secure. So we want to make it really clear, business operating the website, not me personally. Despite any other information they may see. So all those things should be in your terms. And last but not least, tool number 4 is we want to have a copyright notice. I'm sure you've seen these on the bottom of websites. Ideally, they should have the date it was first published and then a dash of when it was last published or updated. Sometimes people just put the current year on there, and that can kind of COVID everything. There's disagreements between copyright attorneys what should be in the bottom of your website, but one of those dates. If you put the most recent year date, that's great. Some of those auto-populate, and website builders do that. That's fine. You don't need to worry about that. You don't need to freak out about that. And then it should be the C symbol, copyright symbol, and then the name of your company. Hopefully you've listened to me or other legal professionals who are giving you good advice, and you've set up an LLC or an S corp or C corp for your company or nonprofit. And you're going to put that legal name there because that again is who owns all this awesome stuff that's on your website. And then the words, the magic words, all rights reserved. What does that mean? It means whatever we have, I own it. I am the big kahuna. I am queen of the rock. I am reserving all the rights. And if you want to talk about using any of the rights, meaning any of the stuff on my website— text, audio, video, picture, ideas, whatever— come to me, and we, we will see if I want to arrange that and how much that will cost and what that will look like. But in— despite anything else to the contrary, I'm reserving all my rights. They belong to me unless we say otherwise. Okay, these statements, copyright statements, you don't have to have them. The law changed in the 1970s, and so it doesn't mean that you lose copyright control if you're like, oh my gosh, I haven't had those, I don't have copyright. No, that's not the case. You have copyright as soon as you create something and it comes out of your head and it's written down in something. You own copyright to it. However, it's a lot easier for you to enforce those rights if we jump through some hoops and we make it clear to someone that you are aware of your copyrights and they are aware of the copyright. Someone can't be like, well, I didn't know, I didn't know this website belonged to you, I didn't know this information belonged to you. Check my footer, it's right there. So we want to make it very difficult and make it harder for people to argue that they didn't know, okay, that they were being an idiot, okay? So let's put that up. Let's put our basic tools and boundaries in place. We love boundaries. Boundaries are sexy. Let's make sure we have them in place for our business. Quick recap: what are the 4 absolute things you need on our website? Disclaimers and disclosures, privacy policy, and opt-ins for your newsletter. So that means if you have an email newsletter, or if there's freebies, anything else that you're giving out, make sure people know that by putting in their email address into a form, they're opting into that. Make sure there's a clear opt-in, possible cookie notice if you need it. Number 3 is terms and conditions. And number 4 is your copyright notice. Now, if you're saying, hey, this sounds really complicated and now I'm stressing out and I don't know if my website's protected, I don't know if my website developer put this up or my VA, or if I have this stuff up or if it fell off a truck off the internet and it actually contains all this good stuff it's supposed to, I got you covered. I want you to head to my shop creativecontracts.co and get the website legal bundle. Has all of these things that you need in here. I update it regularly. If the law changes, I update it. And if the law changes after you purchase it, I will email you the updates and make sure that you are doing what you need to make sure that you can have substantial compliance with this law. You can keep your website legal, protected, moving forward, selling, moving and grooving, all the things that needs to do. So head on over Creative Contracts and get yourself and pick up the website legal bundle. Make sure to cross all this stuff off your list. And do it in an easy peasy way. Color codes, video instructions, guides to make sure you know what's in your site terms. That way, if anyone has a question, you can explain it to them. I don't believe in fine print that people can't explain. I don't believe in gotcha phrases. Here at Creative Contracts and BrittanyRatelle.com, we want to make sure that we can serve people and be clear. And we think legal should just be a tool that we can use in the scaffolding of our business so we can set up good boundaries and good relationships with the people that we're serving and doing business with. So let's make sure we can do that clearly and that our website is just a piece of that puzzle. Thanks so much for joining me today and getting these tips. If you haven't liked and subscribed to this channel, make sure you do that. I've got lots of great info to you, especially this video is part of foundational series I have on getting your business legally legit. If you haven't checked out the other videos, make sure you do. I talk about how to choose which entity structure you should for your business, LLC versus S corp versus sole prop. How you can make sure your business doesn't look like a hobby and it looks like a real business, as well as the introduction for how to draft and negotiate contracts like a lawyer in case you don't have a lawyer in your back pocket. Thanks so much for joining me. Catch you on the flip side. Here's a little bonus legal hack. While you should definitely have this text in the terms and conditions or the footer of your website, you also want to make sure that if you're selling from your website, and that means selling anything physical or digital products, that your customers are also consenting to the terms on checkout. Most of the e-commerce platforms now and different website plugins that allow you to run e-commerce are allowing this pretty easily capability. So check your terms or your settings, but you should be able to link so that when people check out, they have to check a little box and they should have to check the box. Make sure that box is not pre-checked. Those are called shrink wrap agreements or click wrap agreements, and they are enforceable. Up to a certain limit. Of course, there's always going to be lawyers who are going to fight about that. That's the name of the game for them. But we want to make sure that you have your terms and conditions and your privacy policy are ones that are linked in that. And if you're not sure again what should be in those agreements, or after listening today you still have lingering questions about what's right for you and your business, especially if you are selling from your website and you're selling certain digital products or intellectual property products, make sure you check out Creative Contracts. I have specific terms that are the language that you should have linked in there for masterminds, for online courses, for digital products, for other online groups or memberships or subscriptions behind a paywall that people might be part of to make sure that whatever your customers are agreeing to purchase, those boundaries are going to fit for you and your business, and they're going to make sure that you guys can work well together now and in the future.