Web Law Generator - The True Story

[gammo]

The whole buzz about Web Law Generator (WLG) is quite interesting. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, Web Law Generator is a piece of software used to generate legal/copyright information for websites. Simply put, if you had a copy of it, you could generate a Disclaimer/Copyright/Legal Information (D/C/LI) page in seconds, upload it to your server and you are good to go.

The problem however seems to be that the makers of the software never authorized for it to be offered for sale on the open market. As such, anyone found in possession of it is liable to be sued. Interestingly enough, if they spot one of your D/C/LI pages and they recognize it was created using WLG, you can be sued.

On the other hand, I hear people saying that none of the ablove is true. Now, who is right here? Those who says it's illegal to have it or those who say it isn't? I looked for info on the matter and found nothing really substantiating the 'sue' claim as there are still quite a number of people selling it. What really is going on?

 

[labrocca]

http://www.marysheadlines.com/urgen...s-and-privacy-statements-dont-be-deceived.htm

Seems true.

 

[Ronald Regging]

I think they'd be more apt to go after the people selling the program, rather then end-users. And it stands to reason that if you are an end-user who was completely in the dark about the legality of the situation, you have little liability. Obviously due diligence is in order when it comes to any business transaction, but if you were defrauded by another party claiming a legal right to sell you something, then your liability is rather minimal. I think in cases like this it comes down to scare tactics... I heard of another similar situation where the copyright owner went after end-users who unknowingly purchased illegally copies, and most of the people decided to settle out of court. Whether this only included removal of the copyrighted material or some kind of compensation is unknown. But if I was an unknowing victim of some party selling documents which they had no legal right to, I wouldn't be admitting liability and I'd fight it.

Even though the article Labrocca linked to states that there is nothing in the copyright law to protect "innocent" violations, there actually is. Section 504 c 2 states, "In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200."

And I believe in any case where a party can prove they unknowingly purchased and used material in violation of copyright, any reasonable court would not award damages more than $200... So financially speaking, it doesn't make sense for a company to spend money on legal fees to go after an innocent end-user whose liability would likely be reduced to a mere $200...

 

[labrocca]

Slip...did you bother to read the link I sent.

Federal copyright law provides no immunity for so called “innocent” copyright
infringement.

And also

The next wave of legal liability begins on two fronts. The
copyright holder now has damages against everyone in the
chain that the marketer sold the rights to, and everyone
they sold it to, so on and so on.

Anyone adding a legal documents to their site must at least have a site. If I was the copyright holder..I would be demanding a whole lot of sites in exchange for dropping a suit.

 

[Ronald Regging]

Slip...did you bother to read the link I sent.

I did, i was just editing my post

While, theres still the likelihood of a company being awarded legal fees, it just doesn't seem likely in my opinion that a company would target someone they know to likely be a victim of fraud by another party, spend tons of money on legal fees, hoping to recover $200 and possibly their legal fees. While it's possible they could recover more than $200, it just doesn't seem like smart business to go after unknowing victims... Especially when a simple initial contact, informing of infringement would usually do the trick for removal of said infringing content.

Now obviously anything is possible, so I'm not saying to completely disregard warnings, especially since there are a lot of FREE TOS and Privacy policies to be found (check out wordpress.org or wordpress.com to get some decent free ones).

 

[Dave_Z]

I somewhat happen to know the juicy story behind that. :D

Bob Silber is an attorney regularly consulted by many internet marketing peeps
on legal issues affecting them. He also drafted his own set of legal fine prints
(disclaimers, privacy policy, etc.) based on how much time money and effort
he spent trying to understand and document the legal issues facing those who
wish to do business online.

In creating those documents, he's practically gained copyright for such under
US law.

Now I don't completely recall this part, but it seemed that whoever designed
WLG had probably "copied" many portions of it from Bob's own documents. And
others began using WLG to develop their own legal fine prints.

When Bob eventually discovered (via copyscape and other sources) that some
websites' legal fine prints bore a "striking resemblance" to his own, he decided
to lay the smackdown. You don't waste time finding out the circumstances
behind them when you see the fact that someone's infringing your copyright.

One reality with this issue is that many people just want to save a few bucks
when it comes to trying to legally cover their behinds. We all know how costly
this can be, especially when paying for attorney's time.

But the law's complicated enough as it is, especially when different states and
areas have their own respective laws on certain issues. How California handles
spam-related issues can be approached differently in Michigan (or whatever
that state is, I don't exactly recall).

Bob knows that, and he also knows lots of people are willing to pay. He issues
licenses to those who can pay his price, which isn't too low but not too high
either if one considers the potential.

Of course, no legal fine prints can completely shield you 100% from the FTC or
those who still wish to sue you for whatever, and each must be "customized"
according to that state's laws. But if done right, they can help you "win your
case" should it reach Court and possibly keep lawsuits to a minimum.

Some people claim they can't find a registered copyright for Bob's documents,
and were angered when Bob didn't reply to their "request" to "prove his claim".
That's probably why some of them believed this is false and thought he was
just being a bully.

There are at least 2 potential problems when using any of those sites giving
those free privacy policies, disclaimers, etc:

1. You have no way of verifying if they're indeed "copyright-free".

2. Those legal fine print generators have no assurance they're in compliance
with the laws of the area you're doing business in.

Heck, some of them disclaim liability if sh** hits the fan despite you using any
of their thingies. IIRC one site gave such, but they're based in Sudan!

Just a few months ago, somebody here offered to create legal fine prints after
supplying some details. I suspected it was done via a private-label or even a
variation of WLG.

I've since warned them of the possible implications of this, especially when I
found out Bob Silber started sending C&Ds.