People starting websites need to know about how the law affects them. I know it's not a really exciting subject, and I personally have a special hatred for extraneous laws (99.9999999% of them), but it's not a bad idea to consider it. Some things I think people need to know about are:
- The COPPA, or Children's Online Privacy Protection Act — This oppressive piece of legislation makes it so that children under 13 years old need to get their parent's permission in writing and sent to a webmaster in order for the child to submit information to a website. Since most sites cannot possibly afford to comply with this nutty thing, they simply do not allow users under 13.
In Drupal, I've implemented this prevention using a slightly modified version of the Validateage module. My modifications:
- Changed some of the text it prints which seems to be written with adult sites in mind.
- Changed all instances of 18 to 13. (Why not?)
- Licenses — Do you want to copyright your website and reserve all rights? What about using a Creative Commons license? What about content added by users? Do you own it after they submit it or do they own it?
- Any other notable law-related issues you guys usually consider while building websites for people.
re: Websites & The Law
There is also a podcast about legal issues in Podcasting and online media in general that you might like to listen to called: "Rules for the revolution".
The Law
There are a number of options. For licensing you may want to reserve all right, use a creative commons license, or there is a GPL license that applies to stuff like this. Personally, for stuff I was to share I use the appropriate creative commons license.
Good call on the Validateage module. Before that module was around an option I used was the legal module. Using this to have someone attest they are of legal age.
You could also use the profile module to do this. Have a checkbox profile item that says someone is over the age of 13 years old.
Have you thought of putting you changes in an issue on the validateage module? So the admin for the module can think of incorporating them for others.
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com
Podcasting implies a license?
I recalled that the "Podcasting Legal Guide : Rules for the Revolution" document discussion http://wiki.creativecommons.or....
found on the Creative Commons Wiki suggested that providing a podcast could be considered to provide an implicit license. It could also be argued that some copying was protected by fair use or a compulsory license.
This certainly seems like a strong argument to me. The act of downloading the digital files is a form of copying that is actively being promoted both by posting the files for download and providing the feed.
The weakness I see in using or relying on such an implicit or compulsory license is that you will be putting the determination of the extent and terms of the license up to the courts with so very little guidance. I think in general everybody would be better if the license was provided in a more explicit form (Creative Commons or other).
I personally also like it better when I know what the podcaster does and doesn't want me doing (otherwise I have to guess, make assumptions, or try to contact copyright owners) ... and that usually just isn't going to happen.
(Just my opinion and observations)
Mark
What about content added by users ... ownership.
In response to a couple of questions posed...
..more dry legal stuff!!
If the content added by said users has any type of creative element (hint anything that is a performance or expressive language is going to qualify), then: The ownership will remain with the original creator or their heirs until copyright expiration or it is transferred (by contract) to someone else or the public domain.
A transfer to public domain will also requires some contract-like documentation to execute effectively.
If the user is a church employee and creates it during the course of their employment, then their creations normally belong to the church. Ministers generally don't fall under this provision though, as they are typically regarded as independent professionals operating under a "settlement agreement" or something similar.
Even after a copyright is transferred by contract, put into the public domain, or assigned by employment... some rights associated with reputation, attribution, etc will typically remain with the creator. These rights are sometimes referred to using the terms "moral" or "authorship".
So getting your submitters (including ministers) to agree to some type of public sharing license might be a good way to deal with some of these concerns. Creative Commons offers several different license variations. You could also prepare a variation for your own use. The use and distribution of the contributed content might or might not fall under "fair use" or "compulsory license" provisions of law. However courts interpretations regarding this stuff has varied widely and changed frequently.
Mark
(For the record: this isn't a legal opinion and I'm not a lawyer. I'm just sharing some aggregated and distilled version of what I've derived from the US Copyright Office, the Creative Commons, and from considerable reading and a few exchanges on other church, legal, and tech web sites.)